Emily wasn’t used waking up this early and heading to the gym, but ever since she’d agreed to go to Anastasia’s island for spring break, she’d started to worry about how she would look in the bathing suit that she hadn’t worn since last summer. It was too late to do much of anything about her tan, but at the very least, she wanted to make sure that she finished shedding the last few extra pounds she’d been trying to lose since Christmas. She was too busy to make it to the gym after class, so she’d decided to start working out a couple mornings a week.
The locker room was quiet when she came in, with just a handful of girls changing into workout clothes or swimsuits. Since the central gym was the only one with an indoor pool, and the mornings were still a bit chilly, it was seeing more traffic than usual. Emily picked a row of lockers at random, squeezing politely by a couple of younger girls who were toweling off from a very early swimming session, and took the first available open locker. She didn’t even notice the girl a few lockers over, right above the floor, until she had already unpacked her stuff. She was already half-changed into her gym clothes when she realized that she had blue hair.
Emily quickly considered her options. The idea of trotting to the next row, partially dressed and holding her gym clothes and shoes didn’t seem appealing or dignified, so she resigned herself to changing rapidly and hoping that Eerie either wouldn’t notice or wouldn’t talk to her, or wouldn’t talk to her if she did. Emily took her shirt off; glad that she had put her sports bra on in her dorm room, and grabbed her gym shirt and pulled that over her head. When she finished putting it on, she found herself standing almost toe-to-toe with an obviously surprised Eerie, wearing a black one-piece swimsuit and frozen stock still, in the act of tucking her blue hair into a swim cap.
“Oh,” Emily said faintly, trying to summon a smile, “hello.”
“Hi,” Eerie squeaked. “Yes. Um. Hi.”
“Well, Eerie,” Emily asked, hurriedly turning back to shoving her clothes into her locker, as if the activity required her full attention, “how have you been?”
“Not great. In trouble,” Eerie said sadly, shaking her head. “What about you, Emily?”
“Things are fine,” Emily said, her voice oddly shrill, since she was talking to the main reason that things were not, in fact, fine. Her hands were trembling so slightly that no one else would notice it, but Eerie looked no more than slightly nervous. Emily was surprised and emboldened by the rush of self-righteous anger she felt.
“Good,” Eerie said, sounding doubtful. “You are here very early”.
“So are you,” Emily said defensively. The last thing she was about to admit to was her current weight loss regime. Even admitting the necessity would be, she felt certain, some sort of moral victory for the blue-haired freak.
“I always swim in the morning,” Eerie explained in her odd, melodic voice. “But you do the three o’clock yoga class with Anastasia. Everyone is talking about it.”
“Is that so?” Emily asked as she pulled on her running socks, hoping to draw Eerie out. She was secretly pleased with the idea that people were talking about her, even if it was about her and Anastasia.
“Yes,” Eerie said, apparently uninterested in explaining any further. After a moment’s delay, she just turned back to her locker, pulling out a pair of flip-flops and then closing the door behind her. Emily reached for her trainers, and then she got a nasty idea.
She tried unsuccessfully to put it aside while she laced up her left shoe, but it wasn’t going anywhere, even if it was mean, even if it was beneath her. Emily reminded herself that this was not just any girl, but her rival, who would doom her entire future, unchecked. This was the person, she thought angrily, who had almost managed that once before, with her infamous jaunt to San Francisco. And probably, probably just because she liked Alex right now, another airheaded crush, one that Eerie would lose interest in, sooner or later. Did it even matter to her, Emily wondered, that she was screwing up her entire life? Did it bother her at all?
“I’ve been so busy lately, it’s been a struggle to make it to the gym,” Emily said lightly, loudly enough that Eerie stopped walking away to listen. “First there was the dinner party, and now, with spring break coming up, there are of course a million details to take care of before I go away to Anastasia’s. You know, what to wear, what to pack, that sort of thing. Then, of course, Alex needs help with all the same things. The boy hardly knows anything at all about that sort of thing, don’t you agree? Do you think he even has a swim suit?”
Emily looked up at Eerie and smiled sweetly. The girl’s face remained as flat and expressionless as always, but Emily could see her hand twisting one of the corners of the white towel she clutched to her chest, and she knew that she had gotten through.
“I don’t know,” Eerie said quietly. “I have never seen him swim.”
She wasn’t sure what to make of that. Her expected elation mixed with more than a hint of doubt. Was Eerie really so dense? On the other hand, was she simply unconcerned? She hadn’t made any secret of her interest before, and even if she actually was Alex’s girlfriend, how could she possibly be so confident when he was going away with Emily for nearly three weeks?
She couldn’t be. Emily decided to twist the knife.
“What are you doing over break, Eerie?”
Was there a flicker, a glimmer of light above her head? Perhaps the barest hint of a halo?
“Coding down at Processing in Central,” Eerie said slowly. “Field study. It’s not so bad.”
She thought she could see it again, above Eerie’s head. Never long enough to read it, never vivid enough to identify the hue, but she knew that she was rattled, if it was visible to her at all. She had gotten to the changeling, she thought triumphantly.
“You poor thing,” Emily said sympathetically. She did feel some sympathy for Eerie — after all, she fully intended on taking Alex from her while she was stuck in Central, working in a cubicle under fluorescent lights, staring at a monitor. But that, she was starting to realize, might still not be enough. Emily was not about to lose to her, and she didn’t like the idea of Eerie being there for Alex to come back to. “That sounds awful.”
“It’s not so bad,” Eerie repeated, not sounding too convinced. She turned and took a step away, then stopped and looked back. “Have a fun break, Emily.”
“I will,” she promised the girl’s back, surprised and emboldened by her bad intentions. “And you, too, Eerie.”
Somewhere in London, in a fashionable loft with a view of the Thames, Margot killed four members of the former Taos Cartel, fast, but not so fast that she didn’t notice that the first one, the black guy, had still been at the Academy when she was a kid. She remembered watching him play basketball, out the window of the little house she shared with Eerie, while she fractured his skull against the white-painted concrete wall. His wife and the other two weren’t people she knew, so they were easier. She found herself staring at the way the blood pooled and collected on the flat’s antique Persian rugs after, marring the delicacy of the designs.
She was glad, for the first time since she had started working for Audits, not to be at home, back at the Academy.
“…it was fascinating. Apparently, Professor Khan is part of a Black Sun splinter cartel called the Far Shores, which maintains a private institution in Central out on the Fringe, you know, the edge of the city, right where it hits the Ether. Anyway, that’s what they study there — the Ether — and some of theories they are exploring are nothing short of revolutionary. One possibility he discussed revolved around the idea that the Ether is actually a solution, a complex stew of constituent elements. Not chemicals, of course, but something analogous; and that Central and even the Earth itself, the whole universe, all a crystallization of these elements, like a pearl forming in an oyster’s shell, lacquer building around an irritation, an anomaly within the Ether that enlarges and solidifies over time. That was just one of the ideas he talked about! He discussed various scenarios for an hour, and then I stayed after and listened to him talk after class until dinner, and it was one mind-blowing idea after another…”
“Uh-huh,” Alex said, not looking up from the screen of his laptop.
“Well, think about the potential!” Vivik raved. “If Central and our world crystallized out of the Ether, than that means there could be other places in the Ether! Other worlds, other universes, even. Professor Kahn thought that it was a real possibility, that the Ether serves in one form or another as a boundary between universes, and that it might even be possible to travel within it, from our universe to another one, Alex! We might even be doing it right now, if he was right about Central. Can you imagine?”
“Uh-huh.”
Vivik looked over at his friend, who was lying on his stomach across his bed, staring at his laptop, one hand propping up his chin. His other hand was wrapped with bandages and in a skeletal black brace, rested on the touchpad. He wasn’t sure what it was that he was looking at, but Alex didn’t seem any more absorbed by it than he was by Vivik’s ongoing lecture. Vivik sighed, but it was an affectionate sigh.
“You couldn’t care less about this stuff, right?” Vivik said, both disappointed and amused. “Did you even hear anything I said?”
“I heard that you stayed late after class so you could hang out with a teacher,” Alex said dryly, “again. You are a total nerd, you know?”
“Oh, well, that’s something, I guess. What is it that you are looking at, anyway?”
“Nothing really. Just this thing that’s been bugging me, I’ve been trying to read about it on the network but, you know, I’m lazy and clueless, so…” Alex said, shutting the laptop and sitting up. “I wish I could go see Rebecca before break, even if she is in a coma or whatever. I’d just feel better somehow.”
“Can I ask you a question, Alex?” Vivik asked hesitantly.
Alex just nodded, futzing around with the clamp on his forearm.
“What are you going to do? About Emily,” Vivik said, feeling his checks redden, but unable to look away, “and the trip and everything. You do like Eerie, right?”
It wasn’t that Vivik didn’t want to go home. Actually, he missed his family, particularly his older brother, a great deal. However, given the choice, Vivik would have given up a million trips to visit home for one vacation with Emily. Not that it seemed likely that anyone was going to give him the option.
“I don’t know,” Alex said morosely, folding his legs in front of him and resting his chin on his knees. “I think so, most of the time. It’s kind of weird, being with her. It’s hard to tell what she’s thinking, or what she wants, or what she’s talking about. Eerie is cool, don’t get me wrong, but Emily’s more…” he said, trailing off self-consciously. “It kinda sucks, you know, talking to you about Emily and stuff. I feel bad about the whole situation.”
Vivik smiled at Alex, partly because his favorite thing about his friend was his almost compulsive honesty, partly to hide the bitterness he couldn’t help but feel over the issue. He had spent the whole of his tenure at the Academy trying to build something more than friendship between himself and Emily Muir, and he hadn’t had any success at all. Then Alex — dopey, perpetually confused Alex — showed up, and suddenly Emily was all smiles and availability, but not for him. Vivik had wanted to ask her to dance at the Winter Dance, and he knew that she would have said yes, even if it was out of charity, but she’d been so resplendent with her hair down and in a tapered silver dress that he hadn’t managed to say anything to her at all. Instead, he had insisted on taking pictures of the event, not because he was a great photographer, but so he could hide behind the camera. He had taken several candid shots of Emily that evening without her realizing, and though he felt guilty over it, that didn’t stop him from taking them out of his bottom desk drawer and looking at them often enough that the corners were blunted and bent.
“Don’t,” Vivik said, with forced cheerfulness. “I’d rather know. It’s not like any of this is your fault.”
“Really? Because I’m pretty sure that all of this is my fault. None of this would have happened if I’d been bright enough not to agree to go with them for Spring Break. Now I’m stuck on an island somewhere for three weeks with Emily and Anastasia and Renton and God-knows-who-else, and I’m not even sure why I agreed to go.”
“Well, what are you going to do?” Vivik repeated softly.
“I don’t know,” Alex said, hanging his head. “Emily is pretty, after all, and she’s always been nice to me. She's not crazy, and she's human, which turns out to be more important than I thought. Three weeks is a long time, too, and I don’t really know what Eerie thinks about all of this…”
“Well, I’m sure she’s totally pleased that you are going on vacation with the girl who’s been all over you from day one,” Vivik said, trying for humor and succeeding only in sounding bitter.
“Yeah, that’s what I figured. At the same time, it’s not as if I owe Eerie something, or I promised her anything. She’s not even really my girlfriend,” Alex said uneasily, “so it isn’t like it would be cheating, exactly. I don’t even know if Eerie would care, honestly.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Vivik snapped, surprising himself. “Of course she is going to care. She wouldn’t have interfered with Emily’s with that whole San Francisco thing if she didn’t care.”
Alex gave him a long, interrogative look, and then nodded in agreement.
“You’re probably right. I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, or for anything bad to happen to either of them, but I don’t see how I can manage that. I don’t really care whether it makes me an asshole or not — I’m not staying celibate forever. I guess, long story short, I don’t have a fucking clue. I can’t even decide which one comes with more strings attached, at this point.”
“Are you complaining?” Vivik mocked gently. “Your life is so hard. Poor Alex and his girl problems.”
Alex looked angry for a moment, but then he laughed it off, and Vivik joined him, more out of relief than anything.
“Yeah, I suppose I shouldn’t expect much pity, huh?”
“Not from me,” Vivik said, grinning.
“That’s right. It would be better for you if I hooked up with Eerie, huh?”
Vivik shrugged uncomfortably, fighting off the urge to say a dozen different uncharitable, unhelpful things.
“Not necessarily,” he admitted. “It’s not like Emily reverts to me somehow if you turn her down. Even if she wasn’t pulled from the Academy at that point, she’s never been interested in me as anything other than a friend. Frankly,” Vivik said, smiling to try to mask the pain inherent in the admission, “I’ve seen more of her thanks to her attempts to get close to you than I ever did before. Maybe if you picked Emily you’d do a bad enough job of being her boyfriend that she’d cheat on you with me, for all I know.”
He meant it as a joke, but Alex just nodded resignedly, as if that scenario was yet another grim possibility for him. While Alex had never been the most upbeat person in the world, since the attack on the Academy, he seemed more inclined to be gloomy, more likely to fall into one of his bad moods and isolate himself from everyone and stop talking. Vivik wasn’t sure why, and he didn’t plan to ask him about it. It wasn’t any of his business, and anyway, he didn’t feel bad for Alex, despite the circumstances. He was still painfully aware that, whatever other problems he might have, Alex could walk up to Emily’s door tonight and he probably wouldn’t be turned away. Whatever else was wrong in Alex’s life, Vivik still would have traded with him for that privilege.
“How long have Anastasia and Emily been friends, anyway?”
“I don't remember them not getting along, exactly,” Vivik said, thinking back. “They could be catty with each other, but I never got the feeling that they particularly disliked each other. I guess they started hanging out not long after you showed up.”
Alex turned away.
“Yeah, I figured,” he said moodily. “You have no idea how tired I am of hearing that.”
Michael broke up four fights in the afternoon class, two involving Steve. Miraculously, one of them hadn’t even been Steve’s fault. Eventually, he gave up on anything other than running, and they spent the session out on the track. Alex didn’t show, but he didn’t have time to worry about his absence, not today.
He had six disciplinary sessions in the early afternoon, and he barely made it back for the late conditioning session. He took one look at the surly faces of the class and didn’t even bother with his planned training routine. Instead, he spent two hours running them into the ground, working every kid he could get his hands on until they were exhausted, in the hope that they would be too tired to act out later. He ran with all of them, miles more than his norm. It took his mind off it, at least.
He hardly ever thought about what it was he was running from.
Mitsuru didn’t have to be so cautious, with Rebecca unresponsive in a hospital bed, but she was anyway, out of long habit. She’d changed into jeans and a black top she thought was cute, and she’d washed her hair and then let it hang down, an unfamiliar, ticklish presence on the back of her shoulders. It wasn’t what she would have chosen to wear, but she couldn’t afford the attention that her little black dress would draw, either. She had excuses planned if anyone stopped her on the way to the upper story of Operations, where he maintained a small apartment, but no one wanted to question anything she did, not now. They just assumed that she knew what she was doing and left it at that, eager to avoid any unnecessary contact with the Audits Department. No one would dare challenge an Auditor.
No one, of course, but her best friend, whose limp hand she had been holding, sometimes in tears, all afternoon.
Still, she checked to make sure the hallway was clear before hurrying along it, stopping at a door near the middle and knocking, softly but firmly. She heard him call out sleepily, and then there was a short delay before he opened the door, just a crack, so that all she could see of him was one eye, which widened in surprise at seeing her. Then he opened the door wide and ushered her inside, checking behind her to make sure that no one saw.
“Mitzi,” he said, reviewing her with obvious concern. “What are you doing here? Is everything okay? It’s really late…”
“No,” she said firmly. “Nothing is okay. And you know why I’m here.”
Alistair backed away slowly, retreating to the kitchen where he made an unnecessary production out of opening a bottle of bourbon and pouring a slug for each of them into two thick blue glasses, handing one to her and draining the other in one motion. He was still wearing the worn brown t-shirt and khakis that he had been wearing earlier in the office, and he still smelled like the stale cigarette smoke that permeated Operations. She sipped hers once for politeness sake, then set it aside on a handy counter while he went back for a refill.
“Mitzi,” he said softly, turning back to face her with a full glass and obvious reluctance. “You know you shouldn’t be here.”
She felt the tears trying to force their way out before they happened, and turned away so that he wouldn’t see them. She hadn’t cried since the night she’d brought Alex Warner back to the Academy, and that had been out of frustration; but since the attack, since her last conversation with Rebecca, she hadn’t been able to stop herself.
“I know what I did was wrong, and I was punished,” she said, her voice shaking more than she would have cared for it to. “Does that mean I’m kicked out of your bed forever?”
She could hear him swear, though it was under his breath. Afraid to open her eyes, she listened to him finish his drink, and the clatter of the glass as he set it down in the sink. She couldn’t hear him as he walked across the room that separated them, and for a long, unhappy moment, she thought that he wouldn’t be able to answer her at all. Then she felt his hands at her waist and she melted in relief, leaning back against his chest, pulling his arms tight around her until she couldn’t feel anything else. Eventually, he let her go, and she turned around to face him.
She could tell by his face that he wanted to say something, but she put her fingers on his lips, hushing him, staring patiently into his eyes. There was only a moment of hesitation, a flash of something that looked a lot like guilt, before he took her hand gently and led her back to the bedroom.
“You are being weird.”
“That is so not true,” Alex objected. “I was just being normal, right that second, right when you said that. If things are weird now, then it’s your fault for saying weird things.”
Eerie looked at him skeptically with her dilated eyes.
“I don’t think so,” she said gravely. “I do that a lot, so I know what that’s like, and this isn’t that. It’s different.”
“Huh?”
Eerie sighed and released his hand, stopping in the path and looking at him forlornly.
“You suck. Stop lying. Just tell me what it is. Is it because you are going away? Because I am going to Central for field study?”
Alex stopped too, and swore. He couldn’t look at her while he said it.
“I just keep wondering about that thing with Edward, or whatever it was. You did some shit to me, back there to my protocol, right? And then he said some stuff, and it kinda bugged me,” he said defensively, shoving his hands in his jeans pockets.
“He said some stuff…” Eerie repeated doubtfully, clearly not understanding. Then, slowly, it dawned on her, and her expression changed, to something he hadn’t seen before. “Oh. And it bugged you?”
“Yeah,” Alex admitted.
“Why do you care? Why does it matter what happened? We helped each other, and Edward’s gone now, anyway. I never even talked to him when he was… you know. Alive. Why would he know anything about me?”
Alex looked away, and nodded, not exactly sure what he was agreeing to, or admitting too. The moment the words had left his mouth, he had known that this was a bad, self-punishing idea, and he wished that he hadn’t started at all. Nevertheless, the words seemed like they had been festering inside him for a long time, fermenting in his suspicions, and then, at the worst possible moment, before three weeks of separation and temptation, it all came boiling out of him.
“It’s just… how did you do that thing? When you made my protocol work so easily. I’ve never been able to do that, myself.”
“I don’t know,” Eerie said, shrugging and looking away nervously.
“Okay, but Edward was saying some stuff about… about how you were like him,” Alex said, frustrated, and not sure why.
“Dead?”
“No… like, maybe, there was something about you that you weren’t telling me.”
“What do you want me to say?” Eerie said. She looked hurt, which was much, much worse than her being angry. “You’ve never asked me anything about myself. Is it my fault that you don’t know anything about me? I didn’t think that you were interested.”
“Oh, fuck, Eerie, that isn’t it all…” Alex said, turning toward her, realizing she was right.
“Why do I have to explain myself to you, anyway?” Eerie demanded. “You are going on vacation with a girl who likes you. A girl you sit next to in class. A girl you hold hands with. And do I ever give you a hard time about it?”
“No, no you don’t, and I didn’t mean to…” Alex said, reaching out his hands to try to hold her.
“Maybe you shouldn’t be touching me, Alex,” Eerie said, slapping his hand away. “Since you aren’t sure that you can trust me.”
“Eerie, please, you have to let me — look, I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean it. I wish I hadn’t said anything at all…”
“How long have you been thinking about this anyway?” Eerie said, abruptly tearful. “Have you been suspicious of me this entire time? Is that why you are always so weird when I try to be nice to you? I hear all the names they call me, you know. All the things they say about me. I didn’t think that you would be like that.”
Alex tried to object, but she turned away, and he didn’t blame her. She was right, and he knew it, sick to his stomach and sick through his heart, he knew it. He also knew that he had nothing to offer to fix it but it lies and flattery, and that both would fall short. He wasn’t surprised when she started to walk away, or that he didn’t do anything to stop her.
“Have a nice trip, Alex,” Eerie said, not looking back at him.
He just stood there, hoping the earth would open up and swallow him, hoping that he could stop his heart from beating just by thinking about it. Nothing of the kind happened. The world remained as before, the girl continued to walk away. He just stood there and watched her go, knowing that if he did nothing, that there would be nothing left between them for him to come back to. Yet all he did was watch her leave.
When Xia felt like this, the only thing to do was clean. He started at the middle of the room, using disinfectant that he made himself. The soap he used left a particular sheen that allowed him to see where he had cleaned already, so he could be precise. He did the floors with a rag, by hand, just to be sure. Then he did the walls. Then he cleaned everything in the kitchen, which was just a half-dozen dishes and a freezer full of bagged, frozen meats and vegetables that he had selected, prepared and vacuum-sealed himself. Then he did the bathroom and the futon he slept on, even though he’d done it the day before. Then he showered, changed clothes, and brushed his teeth.
It didn’t make him feel all that much better.
He put out a package of frozen broccoli and a chicken breast, each in its individual wrapper, to thaw, before he boiled and baked them, respectively. He took one look at the finished product, then put it back in the refrigerator, and had a sip from a sealed bottle of water instead.
Then he went to go change the tape that sealed the cracks in the door.
“Tell me,” Alice suggested playfully, “do you know what your favorite food is?”
The prisoner looked at her warily, blinking to get rid of the water that kept dripping from his hair into his eyes. He was too out-of-breath to respond immediately, but Alice was feeling generous, so she gave him time.
“What?”
His shaky voice belied his gruff tone. Alice’s grin widened another notch.
“Well, honestly, I’ve forgotten mine,” Alice continued brightly. “I thought you could relate, since you have all those cognitive blocks and anti-interrogation routines restricting your memory. It’s more complicated than you would think. I had a turkey with Swiss the other day, and it was okay, but for all I know, that’s my favorite sandwich, right?”
Alice stopped while she leaned over to the side, picking up the industrial sized cattle prod that sat next to her chair, moving it slowly enough that the man could watch her double check the batteries, the power, the weight of the thing. His chest heaved in panic. The whole front of his body was soaked.
“Then the next day, I have roast beef, and I’m like, okay, this has got to be it, right here… it was Robert Fisher, right? Anyway, Robert, I order a roast beef on rye and it’s mind-blowing, and I think maybe I’ve found it, and then that night I go out for Italian food, and it all goes right out the window when I have that pasta with cream sauce and shrimp. It could be that one day I’m going to eat some plain yogurt or whole-wheat crackers or some shit and discover that’s my favorite food. It’s nerve-wracking. What if macaroni and cheese is my favorite food and I keep skipping it in the cafeteria every afternoon? What if I like the donuts with jam inside them best, but pass them up ‘cause they look weird?”
Robert Fisher’s eyes crept up to the man above him, the man with his hands placed on his neck and one shoulder, almost in a friendly way. He was a hard man, and he looked it, all bulky muscle and obvious bad intentions. Then they returned to Alice Gallow, leaning across the chair back and smiling at him, happy as a cat with a mouse.
“What the hell are you-?”
He made it that far and then the man behind him drove his head down, into the bucket that he knelt in front of, cued by the slightest nod from Alice. He struggled and thrashed feebly, but he never managed to dislodge the man’s grip or upend the bucket. Alice started to giggle the moment his head hit the water with a gurgling, choking noise, and the man joined her a moment later.
“This shit never gets any less funny,” Alice said, leaning over the chair to watch.
“Are you ever going to ask him any questions?” The man asked, apparently untroubled by his victim’s rather minor struggles. “I’m starting to feel sort of bad for him.”
Alice snorted.
“Taking a page out of Alistair’s book, are we, Mark? You telepaths are all alike. Softheaded bleeding-heart pansies. What is the point of having all you mind-readers around if we still have to ask people goddamn questions?”
They both laughed again.
“Uh, should I let him up?” Mark asked uncertainly.
“Is he thinking about anything interesting yet?”
“Nope,” Mark said, shaking his massive, stubbly head. “Same nursery rhyme he’s been thinking the whole time, same counter-interrogation telepathic routine. Taos did a good job on the memory locks and the cutouts on their people. Quality psychic engineering.”
Alice swore and looked at the ceiling for a moment.
“Okay,” she said, sighing as Robert Fisher’s head came back into view, breaching the water with a hideous, shuddering gasp followed by coughing and spitting water. Mark dumped him unceremoniously on the concrete, where he writhed and shuddered.
“Now, what I was trying to point out is this,” Alice said, leaning close to the wet man, though not so close that his writhing splashed her. “I have forgotten my favorite food. Other things too, but this is the one that bothers me the most, for some reason. Unless luck or research intervenes, I may die never knowing.”
“Bitch,” Robert Fisher spat, “fuck your — ”
Alice made a disappointed sound and then activated the cattle prod, pushing it firmly to his chest. There was sparking, a loud noise, and then a great deal of screaming and twitching, and some steam coming off his wet shirt where the prod touched. She kept it on for ten seconds.
“Don’t be impatient,” Alice scolded. “I am trying to make a point. My point is that I will die without ever being able to remember what I have forgotten. There is nothing I can do about it. You, however, can have all of your precious memories back, just by wanting them. All you have to do is trigger that psychic safety word they implanted in your mind, where my friend Mark can’t get at it, and it will all come flooding back to you. I am envious.”
He didn’t seem to be up to talking yet, but the look in Robert Fisher’s eyes made it abundantly clear that he doubted her sincerity.
“I’m serious,” Alice protested, pausing to zap him again, and then waiting until he stopped moaning and flaying before continuing. “Do you know what it’s like to suspect that you could be walking right by your favorite food, your dream house, the perfect lover, even ignoring your own birthday, all because you can’t remember? You should be grateful for what you have. You’re lucky to have the two of us here to assist you, working hard to try and help jog that memory for you.”
Robert Fisher straightened partway up and looked her hard in the eye. There was a faint crackle of power, a minor fluctuation in the Ether. Alice stared back hard for a moment, and then she laughed, and jammed the cattle prod into his crotch, activating it while the big man behind him recoiled in laughter and sympathetic pain. Again, Alice politely waited until Robert had stopped thrashing about on the floor.
“You are probably wondering why it is that you cannot use your magic brains to kill us,” Alice said crisply. “I should have pointed this out earlier, but I tend to lose my train of thought when I am having fun. My friend Mark Costas probably isn’t familiar to you, but he should be, if there was any justice in the world. You see, Bobby, you might be something of a telepath, but Mark here is a very special kind of telepath; really, he’s a rare and utterly unique talent.”
“You are too kind,” Mark rumbled.
In fact, he was too kind to point out that he heard this speech a number of times over the years, almost verbatim, and that he knew that it came from her diaries rather than any direct memory of him. However, since he actually was her friend, he kept quiet about this, the same way he kept quiet about the fact that he was also her former student, because he wasn’t sure whether she’d read about that yet. She’d actually been the one who had overseen his transformation from a chubby, awkward little Salvadorian kid from New Mexico to the tattooed enforcer that he was today. Still, no matter what she had forgotten, he was heartened to see Alice being Alice, and it showed in the genuineness of his smile.
“Don’t get me wrong, he can do all the normal shit too. That isn't what makes him unique, though. You see, Mark has a protocol that operates entirely on your autonomic nervous system. I’m sure you know all about that — maybe you’re even good enough to do a little of that sort of thing; making people stop breathing, say, or putting them down for a little nap. Mark, though, he’s fucking surgical when it comes to tampering with the actual workings of your nervous system. When Mark decides that you aren’t going to be able to use your protocols, well, I’m afraid you just can’t access that part of your brain. When Mark decides that you’re going to struggle about as effectively as a prom date after a couple wine coolers, well, then that’s what happens. Are you starting to understand? You, my friend, are going to die, face down in a fucking bucket.”
Robert Fisher coughed, shook, and glared at Alice Gallow, but he didn’t say anything.
“What about now?” she asked, cocking an eyebrow at Mark.
He shook his head slowly.
“Well, then, let’s try again,” Alice suggested jovially, as Mark wrenched Fisher roughly to his knees, again not at all dismayed by his attempts to fight. “Let me know when you think of something interesting to say. Go ahead and call out.”
Mark plunged his head back in the bucket.
“How long till he dies from this?” Alice asked, yawning.
“We’ll have to get a medic in here to set him back up pretty soon, I think,” Mark said, considering.
“You wanna take the kid gloves off, then? We could try the thing with his fingers and the table saw. The last one definitely didn’t like that.”
“Yeah, I guess we probably should — wait a minute. I think maybe I got something here,” Mark said, closing his eyes and cocking his head, as if he were listening intently to music only he could hear.
“Would it help if I shocked him in the balls again?” Alice asked.
“Not really.”
Alice pouted, but she let him do his business. She had to remind Mark to let Robert Fisher up for air, and by the time he did, the man was in sorry shape, vomiting all over the floor.
“Gross,” Alice said contemptuously. “What’d you get, son?”
“He’s worried,” Mark said, a grin breaking across his tattooed face like sun through the clouds. “He’s worried about his kids. He’s worried that they didn’t get underground in time, that we’ve found them. He’s worried because he doesn’t think he could handle that.”
“Holy shit! That’s where the conditioning broke? They got sloppy! You have their names?” Alice said, reaching for her cell phone. “Let me make a phone call.”
She stepped out of the room to make the call, leaving Robert and Mark alone.
“Wh-where am I?” Robert Fisher croaked. “Is this Central?”
“Oh, you didn’t recognize it?” Mark asked patiently. “I thought you would. This is the worst place in the world. This is the room you are going to die in.”
Robert Fisher had nothing to say to that. Mark smiled, folded his arms, a man at peace with his place and station in the world, and waited for Alice, who didn’t take very long. She waltzed back into the room, sliding her phone back into her pocket, and kissed Mark on the cheek as she walked past, the only woman he’d ever known tall enough to do that without reaching.
“Mark, how is it that I never snagged you for Audits?” Alice said with her eyes full of laughter. “A man of your talents is wasted on Analysis.”
“I’m a hemophiliac,” Mark said gently, explaining what he had already told her, years before. “My nanites malfunctioned, don’t know why. I bleed, Alice. I wouldn’t last a minute in the field. Besides,” he said, smiling at her affectionately, “I like what I do. So, what’s up with his family?”
“Not sure about the wife or either of his sons, but the assumption is that they were still inside the main Taos compound when Xia torched it…”
“No,” Robert Fisher moaned, until he was cut off by Alice, who pivoted smoothly, without looking away from Mark, and kicked him savagely in the midsection.
“…but we did snag his daughter in the raid. She graduated two years ago, name is Shelly Fisher. You know her?”
Mark shook his head ponderously.
“Me either,” Alice said, shrugging. “But we will soon. Now all we need is another bucket.”
Mark nodded and left the room. He returned toting a second rusted bucket, filled to the point that the water inside slopped and spilled on the concrete as he set it down, not too far from Robert Fisher’s head. Fisher stared at it for a long time, while Alice smiled and watched, nudging Mark with her elbow.
“Don’t do this,” Robert said, pleading with his eyes. “Please. Don’t hurt her.”
“Bobby, Bobby. I thought you would know by now. That’s my thing, baby,” Alice chided, leaning forward, so that her face was only inches from his. “All I do is hurt people.”
“Please…”
“Don’t talk as if I am the one creating this situation,” Alice said, seizing him by the cheeks and squeezing. “You know how to fix it. I am warning you, Bob, that if little Shelly walks through that door, then she is going to die in this room, too. It’s going to be an ugly death. One you will be allowed to watch every second of, before you get the chance to die here yourself. So, I want you to think very carefully about what you want to do, because you don’t have a whole lot of time left.”
The look on Robert Fisher’s face was one of abject pain, the realization of defeat. Exactly, in other words, what she had been waiting for all day. Alice smiled, genuinely pleased.
“Mark,” she asked softly, “is he done?”
Mark nodded absently.
“Quiet, Alice,” he said gruffly, bending down to put his hands on Robert Fisher’s wet head. “I’m trying to work here.”
“So sorry,” Alice whispered, smirking and pacing. It only took a minute. Mark was clearly pleased when he looked up at Alice.
“He gave it up,” Mark said, sounding satisfied. “We’ve got what we need. Locations, safe houses, alarm codes, passwords, dead drops, the whole deal. Fisher is the most senior member we managed to turn out. The Taos Cartel is over with this.”
Robert Fisher moaned, but Alice’s laughter drowned him out.
“Well, alright, Bobby, I appreciate that,” she said jovially. “You saved us a whole lot of time. I’ll keep that in mind, when I use that info to hunt down your wife and sons, if they haven’t been killed already.”
There was a knock at the door, while she shook Robert Fisher like a ragdoll. Mark padded over to glance through the glass panel inset in the security door, nodding to someone outside and then holding up his hand.
“Hey Alice,” Mark said doubtfully. “They brought the girl. What do you want to do with her?”
Alice tossed Robert Fisher on the floor, and then made a fist, and bit her knuckle while she thought about it, looking serious. Her smile spread slowly across her face, as lovely and toxic as the sheen on an oil spill.
“Well, shit,” Alice said, gesturing expansively. “We already went to the trouble of getting another bucket. Be a shame not to use it, right?”
As the sun set behind the hill that sheltered the Academy, Gaul rested his feverish head on the cool expanse of his desk. His mind smoldered with the excess heat of simultaneous processing, buzzing with partial downloads and custom-built Etheric software. Rebecca would have known, he thought, in the corner of his mind that was not burning with possibilities, burdened with a thousand potential futures and borrowed protocols. She would have brought ice water and cold towels, and she wouldn’t have told him to stop, because she would have known that he would ignore her. Instead, she would have sat down on the corner of his desk, lit one of her forbidden cigarettes, and talked to him, making it impossible for him to multi-task, because a conversation with Rebecca was a titanic undertaking. Once she had grounded him, she would have walked him back to his little cottage behind the Administrative building, and she would have run him a cold bath before she left for her own tiny apartment in a disused wing above her own office. And she never would have told anyone about it. Because Rebecca was a master of keeping secrets.
He could almost see her sitting on the corner of his desk. He could almost smell her despised, habitual cigarette, he could almost hear her nagging at him, and he knew that all of this meant that he must be very sick indeed, that he must have been pushing himself far too hard for too long. He didn’t stop, though. Because no one was there to make him.
But Rebecca would have.