But what I’m interested in: he brings a superhuman with him for protection! The guy knows he has a target painted on his back for what he did in Arena Mode, so he’s surrounding himself with these human weapons.
That’s the same as walking into a building with a bazooka. Is that acceptable, Senator? Walking around with a bazooka? Are we going to have new laws in Canada where you can just waltz into a store and say, “Hey, look at me, I want to buy some gum. By the way, I have a bazooka!”
Is that the world we’re living in?
Sen. Jenkins: First of all, I’m a Senator from the state of New York. I’ve actually never been to Toronto, where this attack took place, so I don’t see how discussing their policies—
O’Neill: All right, so Moxon wins this reality show – this ‘Arena Mode’ deal right here in Manhattan. It’s a nightmare. They block the streets, kick us all out of our homes – and for what? To host some no-holds-barred fighting tournament.
Superhumans fighting to the death? What next, Senator? Are we just going to start throwing babies into lion cages so folks can stand around and film it on their camera phones for entertainment?
Sen. Jenkins: Mister O’Neill, with all due respect I thought this was going to be a debate about the proposed minimum wage increase.
O’Neill: This is a live simulcast, Senator. News breaks and we have to make adjustments on the fly. This is what the folks want to see.
Sen. Jenkins: All right, so do you actually have a question for me?
O’Neill: Absolutely. The question is this: how are we supposed to feel sorry for this Matthew Moxon – this billionaire atheist who is, I’m sorry, a murderer?
Sen. Jenkins: Who did he murder, exactly?
O’Neill: Sergei Taktarov! In cold blood. And his accomplice – this Brynja What’s-her-name who claimed to be a resident of Iceland, conveniently disappears.
Sen. Jenkins: Let me get this straight, Mister O’Neill: Sergei Taktarov backed Matthew Moxon into a corner, where he was hiding in an alley. He slammed Moxon into a dumpster, nearly knocking him unconscious. Then, before he could finish the job, Moxon’s partner dropped an acid-filled bullet into his brain, killing him.
O’Neill: Right.
Sen. Jenkins: So the rules and regulations of the tournament aside, wasn’t Moxon just defending himself? Taktarov was about to kill him.
O’Neill: Possibly – we don’t know that.
Sen. Jenkins: Taktarov killed two people earlier in the tourna—
O’Neill: Look, I’m not a criminologist and I’m not going to argue semantics with you, Senator. But this year, a number of evangelical pastors predicted a cataclysmic event. They talked about the End Times. Do you think it’s just a coincidence that these predictions come now, in the exact same year as Moxon kills Taktarov?
Sen. Jenkins: There have been predictions and prophecies about the end of the world virtually every year. They go back centuries.
O’Neill: I don’t keep track of every single prophecy – I’m a busy man. All I know is that folks predicted the End Times this year, and look what happened?
This is history repeating itself. Every time a saviour with supernatural powers comes to earth, promising to usher in a new age of peace and prosperity, he’s killed.
Sen. Jenkins: As far as I’m aware that only happened once.
O’Neill: And now it’s happened again! Are you denying that, Senator? You’re just going to sit there, stare me in the face and deny it?
Sen. Jenkins: I’m not s—
O’Neill: Moxon figures out a way to kill this man – a man who appears to be nearly indestructible – and then disappears. He falls off the face of the earth for months. No press release, no comment. He just up and leaves America in some state-of-the-art hover plane.
Then, three months later he shows up in Canada of all places – the guy can’t even be bothered to return to America – and in his first public appearance he gets stabbed.
Sen. Jenkins: So what are you saying?
O’Neill: I’m saying that this is just the beginning, Senator. The tip of the iceberg. Moxon shows his face for ten seconds in a country where it’s practically illegal to be in a bad mood, and he almost gets killed.
He’s the most hated man on the planet, and there will be a lot more people out there gunning for him, you mark my words.
And on a related note, my new book ‘The Beauty of the Status Quo: Life, Liberty and Low Taxes.’ will be available tomorrow.
Sen. Jenkins: Wait, how is that a related note? And are we finished? I thou—
O’Neill: Thank you for being here, Senator. And now a word from our sponsor.
Chapter Two
“Are you out of your mind?” the nurse shouted from just beyond the threshold. “Lay down, you’ll pop your stitches!”
With my bare feet dangling from the side of the hospital bed, I scanned the room through bleary eyes, tired and stinging from the harsh glare of fluorescent bulbs overhead. I’d forgotten where I was, and how I’d arrived.
By the time the nurse reached me the blood had already seeped through my gown. “Lay back,” she instructed, rapidly unfastening the buttons around my abdomen. The gruesome gash beneath my ribcage looked freshly sutured, with a single stitch popped out of place. “It doesn’t look too bad. Just take it easy, and I’ll find a doctor.”
I glanced at the translucent bracelet fastened around my wrist. ‘Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital. Burlington, Ontario’. It all came back to me in broken, jagged fragments. Screams. Blood. Flashing lights. And questions – lots of questions. Doctors and nurses asking me if I knew my own name, and what day it was, and if I could count how many fingers were being held up in front of me. Surprisingly simple questions become quite a challenge to answer when you’re fading in and out of consciousness, blood streaming from a gaping wound in your body.
I craned my neck in search of clothes and quickly realized I wasn’t alone. Valentina was slouched into an angular wooden chair, cradling a paper cup in her lap. Using her ability to manipulate water she was creating a tiny show for herself, forcing the liquid to dance and flow in long, spiralling streams. When she averted her eyes the water fell, splashing back into the cup.
“Good morning, sunshine.” Her voice was scratchy and dry from the winter air. The dark circles around her eyes indicated that she hadn’t slept in days – possibly since I was admitted. “Do I submit a form for overtime pay, or will the funds show up on my next paycheck?”
“Don’t worry about it. You’ll be compensated.” I squinted at the oversized clock on the far wall, which marked each passing second with an annoying click.
“Sixty-two hours, nineteen minutes,” she stated, before I had the chance to ask the question. “They said you can leave as soon as you’re able to climb a flight of stairs. You were lucky, Mox. The blade missed every major vein and artery.”
I never believed in the absurd notion of luck, but as I continued to cheat death time after time, the concept was slowly growing on me.
As Valentina continued to fill in the blanks of the previous two and a half days, a towering, dark-skinned man strolled into the room with a briefcase in-hand.
“Officer...Dziobak?” I remembered him from Manhattan, when he was hired as private security for Cameron Frost. Even with my memory functioning at a hundred percent, I still had no idea how to pronounce his name.
He chuckled and extended his hand, shaking mine gently. “I told you, Mox – call me Todd. And it’s ‘detective’ now, which is why I lost the blues.” He gestured down at his perfectly pressed khaki pants and crisp white shirt. “How are things? Aside from being a human pin cushion?” His eye trailed down to the fresh bloodstain that dotted my hospital gown.
“I’ve been better,” I said flatly. “But they said it’ll be months before I can break dance again.” I motioned to my bodyguard, who scrambled to her feet and attempted to straighten her blazer and skirt. The outfit was rumpled with a coffee stain marking the left arm; after sleep
ing in her clothes for two consecutive nights, there was no amount of fussing that could have made it appear even remotely presentable. “This is Valentina Garcia.”
“I read the reports,” Todd replied with an affable smile. “Nice work up there in the tower, Miss Garcia. A little messy, but effective. Is that what they taught you in Central Africa?”
I raised an eyebrow, glancing back at her.
“I see you did your homework on me,” she replied, her words frosting over as they spilled from her lips. “Africa was just a job.”
The detective had clearly struck a nerve. Valentina’s posture stiffened, hands balling into tightly clenched fists. I’d never known her to have a short fuse, so the visceral reaction to the officer’s question caught me off-guard.
Before the conversation spiralled out of control I decided to intervene, projecting as much authority as I could while lying prone in a hospital gown. “Can someone please tell me what’s going on here?”
“Your bodyguard has quite a resume,” Todd explained. “She protected a military dictator for over a year. Quite an evil bastard from what I understand, even by the impressive standards of that region.” His eyes flicked back to Valentina. “Not too picky about the clients you work for, I’m guessing.”
“The money spends the same as anyone else’s,” she fired back.
Todd smiled once again, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m sure it does, Miss Garcia...once you wash the blood off.”
I threw my legs over the side of the bed, forcing myself to stand. The sudden movement caused a burning sensation that stretched from my lower abdomen straight up my spinal column. I swayed. Todd reached out and clasped his hand around my arm, keeping me upright. I made a mental note to ask for some additional pain-killers when the nurse came to re-stitch my stomach.
I thanked the detective for his assistance, and asked Valentina to step outside for a moment so we could speak privately. She agreed, replying with nothing more than a sharp nod.
Todd waited for the heavy wooden door to slam shut behind him before speaking again. “She’s a piece of work.”
I couldn’t argue, but her results speak for themselves. “She has her moments, but I owe her my life.”
The detective said nothing, but the look on his face spoke volumes. In his line of work, you survived by putting faith in the people watching your back. When someone takes an oath to protect you – and pulls through in a life-or-death situation – it’s hard to pass judgment on their track record, no matter how sketchy the details might seem at the time.
“Should you be walking around?” he asked.
I groaned and leaned back, using the edge of my bed for support. “Probably not, but I need to get out of here sooner than later.” I glanced down at his briefcase. “I appreciate the visit, but I assume you’re not here for a social call.”
He laid the case flat on my bed and unlatched the locks, flipping open the lid. Inside was a tattered manila folder six inches thick. Old school cop, old school filing system, I suppose. I couldn’t blame him; given the choice, I still preferred the texture of paper against my fingertips to scanning a lifeless holo-screen.
Riffling through the stack of photographs and hand-written notes, he yanked out a creased eight-by-ten snapshot and held it up for my inspection. “Recognize this beauty?”
It was the waiter who stabbed me; a stocky, unshaven man in his mid-thirties, with closely cropped black hair and a broken nose that looked as if it had been continually deviated from a lifetime of bar fights, and had never been allowed enough time to properly heal between brawls.
“His name is Oleg Vovchanchyn, a Russian who immigrated to Canada three years ago. When the Toronto PD fished his body out of Lake Ontario I gave them a call and asked to see some of the evidence.” Todd pulled out a second photo that showed the man’s shirtless chest, likely taken just prior to an autopsy.
Tattoos – seventeen of them, to be exact – blanketed his torso, all with distinct meanings. I assumed at one point they were black, but over the years, the symbols and images had faded to a time-worn, muddy blue. A grim reaper stretched around his ribcage, clutching a sickle in one skeletal hand and a newborn baby in the other. Todd explained that, in a Russian prison, a tattoo of the reaper signifies that you’ve killed before. I didn’t want to know what the baby meant.
Vovchanchyn also had a pair of stars that adorned his shoulders, barbed wire wrapped around his midsection, and the Crucifixion of Christ emblazoned across his chest. Although they all meant something different, they had one thing in common: they were old. Nearly ten years, by the looks of the most recent ink – all except for one. A single tattoo was not only in color, but practically glowed like a fresh coat of paint: a bright red hammer and sickle emblem on his left bicep.
“So he’s a Russian,” I said flatly, tapping the photo. “Aren’t they into that Soviet-era stuff?”
“Maybe,” he replied. “But Oleg here went out and got inked recently. What significant event in this guy’s life could have prompted him to get his first tattoo in a decade?”
“He’s Red Army. How did he know I would be at the CN Tower?” My first reaction was to assume that I was being followed, or that, however unlikely, someone in my inner circle had leaked my location.
“He didn’t,” Todd said with a small shake of his head. “His phone records and Emails came up clean. Not to mention he’s been working at the 360 Restaurant for the last two years. I think it was a coincidence.”
It didn’t seem possible. “So someone who wanted me dead just happened to be serving a plate of fries at the table next to me? Shit...guess I’m not as lucky as I thought.”
“It was going to happen to you sooner or later, because it’s been happening all over the world.”
“What, people getting attacked by angry Russians with poor hygiene?”
“No,” Todd replied gravely. “People getting terminated who look a hell of a lot like you.” He leafed through his file folder and produced more than a dozen photographs of dead bodies. All of the victims were around thirty years old with short brown hair, a square jaw line and blue eyes – it was uncanny. The man who got his throat slit in Oslo could have been my twin.
“This file represents the body count that piled up during the three months you’ve been gone. This is the first killer we’ve caught thanks to your bodyguard, but after a shooting in Budapest last month I dug up this security footage.” He pulled a tablet from the inside pocket of the briefcase and projected a small holo-screen into the air. The soundless video played instantly, displaying a young girl with shoulder–length blond hair, dressed from head-to-toe in black leather. She was circling a corner to duck into an alley, making no attempt to conceal the smoking revolver that she was clutching in her hand. When her back faced the camera, Todd commanded the footage to pause and enhance three-hundred percent. With her hair flowing in mid-stride, the base of her neck was exposed, and it revealed a bright red tattoo. Fresh as a new coat of paint.
I studied the video as it flickered in the sunlight that began to pour through my room’s lone window. The pieces came together with terrifying clarity. “How many?” I asked, unable to unglue my eyes from the holo-screen.
“No idea,” Todd replied softly. “A hundred? A thousand? Hell, we don’t even know how the Red Army is communicating. All we know is that there are a lot of them, and they’re everywhere. And today my theory was confirmed.”
“What’s that?”
“That the group’s objective is pretty simple,” he said. “If there’s a chance to kill Matthew Moxon, take it – no matter what the cost.”
***
The reason I hired a bodyguard in the first place was because I anticipated the backlash, even before news reports started flooding in about the rise of the Red Army. I just had no idea things would escalate this rapidly, or to this degree.
Despite the deepening economic divide in America and around the world, violent crime had actually decreased across the board.
Angered with the disparity between the privileged and the rest of the population, people vented their frustrations online and during the occasional protest – but for the most part, the working poor remained silent. Not because of apathy; at least that’s not how I saw it. I think it was simply a case of exhaustion. Over time a grim realization set in: no matter who they voted for, the man or woman in the Oval Office would maintain the status quo. It was unfair, and demoralizing, and it was certainly worth shouting about, but the average person was simply too tired to continue ice skating uphill.
Now, this was something different. In the aftermath of Sergei Taktarov’s death, a spark had been ignited that birthed a movement. Russia’s Son had embodied everything people wished they could be: he’d been strong, assertive, and powerful beyond measure – and they thought he would be the answer to their prayers. Whether he had the power to carry out his promises and enact massive change was irrelevant, because his followers believed in him. For the first time in generations there’d been hope, and I’d dashed it.
The Red Army’s backlash certainly had the potential to escalate, although it seemed unlikely. Movements, violent or otherwise, were always stomped out before they had the opportunity to spread. The Chicago riot of 2030 was the last public protest of any consequence; it erupted when Congress passed a bill to lower the already stagnant minimum wage, and the result was a silent massacre. People took to the streets, only to be met with tear gas, cattle prods and worse. Only a handful of fatalities were reported, but some estimate the real number was closer to a thousand. In the aftermath, anyone wearing a ‘Remember Chicago’ armband anywhere in America was detained and questioned, being accused of sympathising with domestic terrorists.
By the time the most recent presidential assassination attempt took place in 2035, most of the modern world was already a polarized oligarchy. You were either one of the elite or you weren’t – there wasn’t much in-between.
Now, the world’s most deprived citizens were standing up and taking action, no longer resigned to suffer in silence. Someone – anyone – needed to pay. The government was untouchable, and the upper-class were faceless; a group of random businesspeople who had hoarded most of the world’s wealth. I was the easiest person to point a finger at, and until the witch hunt was called off, I was in the Red Army’s crosshairs.
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