But Fred did not know this. Almost a decade would pass before Fred stopped having night terrors about looking in the mirror and seeing himself, without a face, unable to stare back.
All of this is to say that Fred had spent his entire life trying to be brave. He wanted to make up for the most devastating and embarrassing moment of his life. But deep inside he still had the heart of a coward.
Fred woke up in the warehouse with the worst headache of his life. Burrett stood in front of him.
“Good morning!”
Fred moaned in response. He was too busy trying to orient himself to have a conversation. Fred moved to stand up, but his wrists strained at the feeling of a tight rope binding them behind the chair. More rope strapped his feet to the base of the chair legs.
“I was hoping you’d sleep a little. I don’t want you to see me working on the surprise I’m making for you.” He turned toward Fred and smiled with his crooked teeth. “I really hope you like it.”
Fred’s body tensed in fear, which only tightened the knots around his ankles and wrists.
“Aren’t you a movie buff? You should know that struggling always makes things worse. The secret to escaping is staying relaxed.”
Fred relaxed his muscles out of exhaustion. He closed his eyes and tried to take deep breaths. As oxygen filled his constricted lungs, panic set in once more. He began to hyperventilate.
“Fred, I’m so sorry. Trust me, this will help. I’m almost done.”
Fred squinted to see the unwieldy contraption Burrett was tinkering with in the dark corner of the warehouse. He tightened the corners with an electric screw gun. The sound reminded Fred of the dentist, which didn’t help calm him down. His short and struggled breathing got worse at the thought of the torture device Burrett was working on.
“I’m not afraid!” Fred shouted this across the long room, more to convince himself than discourage Burrett. “I can take whatever you got!”
Burrett turned his head and stared at Fred quizzically. “What?”
“Nothing you can do will scare me. I’m not giving up. I’m not telling you anything!”
Burrett’s eyes darted back and forth as he searched his mind, trying to figure out whatever the hell Fred was talking about. “Okay?” He returned to finishing his sinister project.
Shouting outright lies about his own bravery actually worked. Fake it till you make it, Fred thought. He calmed down enough to relax his muscles. He began slowly rotating his wrists to loosen the loops of cord binding his arms to the chair.
“Oh, by the way!” Burrett stood up and returned his tools to a toolkit. “The cords are all attached to a bomb on your chest.”
Fred had been so preoccupied with whatever Burrett was doing that he never thought to look at what he was wearing. Sure enough, he had on a bulky vest with what looked like a big chunk of clay attached to it. He could also see a row of blinking lights on a repurposed circuit board, with countless wires woven between the cords around him.
“Yeah, if you move too much, or try to stand up, it’ll activate the trigger you’re sitting on. So for my sake, please stay still.” At last, Burrett wheeled the menacing device out of the darkness and toward Fred. “Anyway, do you like classics?”
“W-What?” Fred stuttered.
Burrett opened a side compartment in the device and pulled out a microphone. He plugged it into what Fred now realized was a karaoke machine.
“I asked if you liked the classics? Classical music, I mean. The stuff that goes back several centuries. Back when music had power.”
Fred wasn’t sure if there was a wrong answer to this question, but he was afraid to risk it. After a moment, he said, “I don’t know. I, uh, mostly listen to new stuff?”
Burrett powered up the tablet bolted to the karaoke machine’s side. “I love the classics. Anyway, I’ve been working on this karaoke machine in my spare time. I wanted to test it out, but karaoke is no fun without an audience.” He scrolled through the song selections until he finally landed on his choice. “Aha! There we go.”
At this point Fred was thoroughly confused, and yet no less terrified.
“Do you like Elvis?” Burrett asked as he made his selection. A gently rolling, mid-tempo guitar tune played from the speakers.
“To be honest, I’ve never really listened to—”
But Burrett cut him off with the opening lyric. “We’re caught in a trap… I can’t walk out… Because I love you too much, baby.” Burrett danced, swaying his hips back and forth. “Why can’t you see? What you’re doing to me… When you don’t believe a word I say?” Burrett’s eyes closed. He was lost in the music of The King.
Fred watched, jaw slack. What… the fuck?
“We can’t go on together… With suspicious minds!” Burrett stopped singing for a moment. “I don’t even need to look at the tablet. I know the words by heart!” Then he jumped right back into the song. “So if an old friend I know.. Stops by to say hello… Would I still see suspicion in your eyes?”
Burrett danced toward Fred. “When I was in prison – when I was in that block – I sang Elvis to myself. I know all of them by heart. Every day I’d cycle through his songs in my mind. When it was really bad, I’d sing them out loud. I’d belt them at the top of my lungs. It was my only connection to the outside world. It was the only way I could stay sane.”
Fred felt like this was excellent evidence that it had only made Burrett crazier. He was certain Burrett was hiding something. Building up to something unbearable. “Why do you—”
Burrett cut him off. “We can’t go on together… with suspicious minds… and we can’t build our dreams… on suspicious minds… Some say my tastes are old fashioned, Fred. But a thousand years have gone by and, in my humble opinion, no one has come close to The King.”
Fred was starting to think this was the torture. He couldn’t imagine anything worse than listening to a psychopath sing Elvis. He wouldn’t be surprised if Burrett was planning a finale where he ripped off his tattered clothes to reveal a sequined jumpsuit.
The song built to its final crescendo. Burrett clasped the microphone with both hands and belted into the mic. He nearly blew out the cheap speakers. “Don’t you know I’m caught in a trap! I can’t walk out!” Burrett fell to his knees. “BECAUSE I LOVE YOU TOO MUCH, BABY!”
And at the final lyric, Burrett stood up swinging the microphone around over his head. With the final orbit, he whacked Fred in the side of the face. The hatched wire cover of the microphone left a patterned wound on Fred’s face and a bloody nose. The fading song was lost amid the unbearable, screeching reverb. Burrett dropped the microphone with an echoed thud. As the ringing pierced Fred’s ears, Burrett walked close to him. He crouched down and looked at Fred with sad eyes. “That was fun. I appreciate that. Anyway, let’s see if your friends can save you before you blow up.”
Burrett opened a comm and entered a code to interrupt a nearby signal.
+++
ISA Offices, Malicarsh Building, L45, Theron Techcropolis, Amaros
The office was silent, the air heavy with the weight of dread and guilt.
They’d fallen back to regroup and wait for Burrett to send them the address. Madison and Bill stood awkwardly near the door, caught between supportive sympathy and respectful distance. Merry sat on the settee, expression harrowed. Vlad sat beside her, an arm around her shoulder, staring at his shoes. Cameron paced near Jayne’s desk. Jayne herself was shut in the back room.
She’d needed the space to breathe air that wasn’t choked with preemptive grief. And she needed to make a call.
Once she’d hung up, she stepped back out into the office, her face lined with grim resignation.
“I just got off the phone with Alfonso,” she explained, breaking the uneasy silence of the room. “He’s willing to help however he can. We’ll have all the academy resources he can access at our disposal for this.”
“For what?” Cameron asked. “You’re not seriously thinking of taking th
e bait are you?”
“I don’t think we have much of a choice,” Jayne replied. “He has Fred. And whatever he’s been planning, he’s doing it tonight. We have to stop him, or Fred will be the second person to die.”
Merry swallowed hard. “Third.”
Jayne turned to see the news headline Merry was holding up on her tablet.
“Jayne, I’m so sorry. I just found out. I didn’t know how to tell you.”
Jayne boiled over with rage so quickly she barely read the headline. She didn’t have to. She could have guessed what it said.
Man With Robotic Arm Found Shot in Abandoned Fro-Zone.
Jayne grabbed the holo-vase off her desk and threw it against the wall. “Fuck!” It shattered, and the hologram orchids fizzed out in a static blur. She put her hands on her hips and took a deep breath. “This is our job. Look what he’s done. He has Fred.”
“She’s right,” Merry agreed. “If nothing else we owe it to Fred to try.”
“But there’s got to be a better way than just charging into a trap alone,” Cameron insisted.
“I know,” Jayne said. “That’s why I’m not going in alone. I want you to come with me.”
Cameron stared at her, caught off guard. Jayne turned her stare on everyone else.
“I need all of your help,” she said. “Trying to catch Burrett on my own is the reason this happened. Hell, refusing to admit that I couldn’t work alone is half the reason the academy dropped me. But I can’t do this by myself. Burrett knows me too well and I don’t know him half as well as I’ve been telling myself that I do. I can’t let Fred or anyone else die because of my issues. Will you help me?”
“Of course,” Cameron said immediately.
“Absolutely,” Merry chimed in right behind him.
“We’re with you as well,” Bill added. “Isn’t that right, Maddy?”
“I don’t have any other plans for tonight,” Madison said, shrugging his huge shoulders.
All eyes turned to Vlad, who was patting his jacket down for a smoke. He found it, lit it, and breathed in deeply before he took notice of them watching him.
“I would hope my answer is obvious,” he said finally. “But it’d reassure me to hear that you have an actual plan.”
“Hoping you’d help out with that part honestly,” Jayne replied. “Anything I plan he’s going to see coming a mile away.”
“He saw through my plan too,” Merry pointed out. “If I hadn’t tried to—”
“It’s not your fault,” Jayne said sharply, cutting Merry off. “You were right and the plan was solid. I was the one who underestimated him. Fred shouldn’t have been on his own. I should have had a plan in place for if he didn’t take the bait. This is on me, alright?”
“No, it’s not,” Cameron corrected her. “It’s not on anyone but Burrett. And we’re going to make him pay.”
Jayne nodded, accepting it even if she couldn’t make herself believe it.
“So, let’s make a plan,” she said. “What do we—”
She was interrupted by a knock at the door. It was the distinctive, mechanical rap of a delivery drone.
“Did one of you order pizza?” she asked, already pretty sure she knew the answer. She crossed to the door and Cameron, Madison, and Bill took up guard positions on either side, hands on their holstered weapons, just in case. She opened the door cautiously, but it was just a delivery drone, as expected. She took the box it offered her, recognizing the logo on top with a stab of dread.
“What is it?” Merry asked as Jayne shut the door.
“Donuts,” Jayne replied, feeling slightly nauseous. The Cosmos donut logo had never looked so quietly sinister. She opened the box carefully, expecting the worst. But it was only donuts. “Triple fudge.”
And written on the underside of the lid was a set of coordinates.
“Guy’s really got a flair for theatricality,” Cameron said, looking over her shoulder.
Jayne recognized part of the string of numbers and felt her dread grow. She punched the coordinates into her phone just to make sure and felt her stomach sink as she was proven right.
“This address is on the ground floor of the Takahashi building.”
+++
Police Station, L45, Theron Techcropolis, Amaros
Behind an office door with “Captain Devon Gold” printed out on frosted glass, a holographic projection paced in front of the tightly closed blinds, shoulders tense under his finely tailored suit.
“Relax,” Gold said, leaning back in his chair. “It’s all under control. I’ll move in tonight and get the job done just like we planned. The department gets the glory and you get the girl out of your way, everybody wins.”
When the projection turned towards Captain Gold he flinched. The man was running an encryption program that rendered the face of his hologram a shifting, mosaic puzzle of enlarged pixels. It was unsettling, even on a hologram. But Gold didn’t need to see the man’s face to know who he was. He’d been working with the Dean of the Academy for a long time. Gold had never seen his face, or heard his unaltered voice. He didn’t even know his name. He was simply the Dean. The Academy lived by such vague titles.
“I think not,” the Dean replied, the subtle distortion making his voice sound just slightly deeper than seemed likely for his frame. “Perhaps if you had acted sooner, before that officer was killed—”
“You can’t pin that on me,” Gold said defensively, straightening up. “We were seconds from moving in when Ray decided to play hero. You can't expect me to take the blame for that cock up.”
Gold couldn’t see the Dean’s expression, but something in the steady, silent way that censored, pixelated face stared at him made his throat feel dry. He stopped talking.
“You have allowed this to go on far too long and too far beyond your control,” the Dean said. “It was clearly a mistake to have trusted you with this.”
Gold sputtered in protest, but the Dean continued, ignoring him, turning to face the closed blinds as though he could see through them. For all Gold knew, he could.
“Fortunately, the situation is still salvageable. You are to do nothing. We’re going to let Burrett’s little gamble play out. I’m curious to see what happens.”
Gold swallowed hard, warring with his pride.
“But Burrett’s plan… you know what he could do, the people he could kill—"
“An inconvenience at worst,” the Dean replied, and the hologram shrugged. “And any fallout can be blamed on Austin, which serves our purposes well enough. If she survives, it will be the end of her career.”
“And what if she wins?” Gold asked. “What if she manages to take Burrett down?”
“Then a mad man is off the streets and a valuable intelligence asset is back under our control. We’ll find another way to deal with Austin.”
“And what about our arrangement?” Gold asked, sweat on his brow. “Where does the department come in? I was promised a straight shot to Chief of Police.”
“That was before you proved yourself so inept.” The Dean didn’t even look at him. From his desk he could just see the flicker of distorted pixels over the Dean’s shoulder. “The Academy isn’t in the habit of promoting failures. We’ll have no further need for your services, Captain.”
He hung up the holo-call and as the connection dropped the hologram dissolved into a shower of colorless pixels. Captain Gold watched them drift towards the carpet in silence. When the last one vanished he swiped an arm across his desk, sending everything on it to the floor in a tremendous crash that couldn’t even begin to quell his indignant fury.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Abandoned Factory, L0, Theron Techcropolis, Amaros
“First the graveyard, now this.”
Jayne squinted at the old factory through the lenses of her smog mask, wishing she could see better. The smog was so dense she could hardly see her hand in front of her face. The old factory rose just ahead of her, vanishing into the smog above. Far out o
f sight, it climbed all the way to the two-hundred levels, where it housed some of the most powerful people and businesses on the planet. But down here, on the ground, it was only a burned-out shell, the same as all the buildings around it. The air was oppressively hot and close.
“Maybe we should have spent more time hunting for this asshole in creepy abandoned buildings,” Jayne muttered.
“The graveyard was bad enough,” Merry said in her ear. “Besides, you would have been looking forever. There’s too many creepy old buildings down here to count.”
“You know I’ve never actually been this far down?” Cameron said. He was standing beside her but she heard his voice over the communicator in her ear. Their smog masks were too thick to hear each other through. “It feels weird, standing on solid ground. Like the gravity is different.”
“Yeah, this place is creepy as hell,” Jayne muttered. “Let’s just finish this and get out of here as fast as we can, alright?”
She kept thinking she could see people moving through the smog out of the corner of her eye. Just glimpses of shadows that she knew couldn’t be real. Everyone knew no one lived in the lowest five levels. The smog here was so caustic you could end up with lesions on your skin just from standing in it too long. Rain and wind and sunlight never reached this place. It existed in a perpetual toxic twilight.
“It looks like the bastard is scrambling signals from the inside,” Merry said, disrupting Jayne’s thoughts.
“Yeah, that’s to be expected,” Jayne replied. “You can crack it, right?”
“Of course, who do you take me for? But it’s going to take time.”
“And Fred can’t wait,” Jayne finished, checking the time. “We’ll have to go in blind for now.”
“Not completely blind,” Vlad chimed in. “Burrett was nice enough to provide us with the blueprints for this building. There are four floors on this level, and at least that many underground.”
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