Paint the Toon Red

by A. J. Mayall

  “That’s a great idea! I could probably get in some real good views with that.”

  I felt bad for using him like this, but it was the best plan I had on such short notice, and it was close to what I wanted him to do in the first place.

  “The only thing is I can’t really shoot worth a darn.”

  “And you want someone to be able to pull the trigger for you?”

  I nodded. “Exactly.”

  He grinned and looked through all the parts. He found a small lever that could fit in and easily got wired into the arm brace. I loaded up the program and tested it on the range, with no guns in hand.

  It easily pushed my finger toward the trigger. I couldn’t lift my hand to hurt someone, but he could pull the trigger for me.

  “Gonna need a way to tell you which way to go…”

  Boost was a blur, literally, looking through all the equipment and coming back with what looked like a dog shock collar. “I’ve seen a game with this sort of stuff in it before. It was part of a really cool gimmick about how some prisoners who were put into a deathmatch situation against their will, and they had to do whatever someone commanded them to do.”

  I nodded. He put around my neck and pulled it tight. I don’t exactly have that thick of a neck now; it’s about as thin as my hose arm.

  I stood still, body decked out with guns from head to toe. He loaded up the control program, lifting my arms, aiming them around and then using the W, A, S, and D keys to send small shocks to my neck to move me in a direction.

  “This is nice and all, but I need to get this program on my computer.”

  I noticed Chance’s laptop. When I flipped it open and turned it on, lo and behold, he had a backup of all of his testing systems. Who’d have thought the program that helps calibrate this thing could turn his aim-assisting exoskeletons into a crappy suit that made me into a murder-bot?

  I folded it up and tucked it under my arm. I held that in one hand and my phone in the other.

  “We need to get back to my house. How do we do it?”

  Boost laughed, grabbed me by the bowtie, and jumped toward the screen. I screamed, expecting to faceplant into it and break the equipment, but I slipped through. There was an odd static tingle as my head went into the screen, and then I was somewhere else.

  I looked around, and I was in a beautiful field. The sun was high in the sky. It was like every Saturday morning cartoon opening you could think of: just wide fields and rainbows. I felt home in a way I haven’t felt in years. I felt safe.

  I felt something calling to me.

  There was a presence in my mind…soft, loving. “Fairfax, just stay,” was all I heard. A voice that felt like home. Not my home, but the feeling of home when you’re a kid.

  I looked to Boost as he ran, waving a hand in front of him as another window opened up.

  “Wait a second! I just heard a—”

  “Oh, Mother talked to you? That’s great! We talk a lot.”

  “Mother? I—”

  He grabbed my hand and pulled me through the window as he jumped. We landed in the living room of my apartment. Kyle still wasn’t home yet.

  The feel that place had…the warmth and love of that voice. I hadn’t felt anything like that since I was a kid, sitting in front of the television on Saturday morning.

  I wept, and I didn’t know why.

  “Is that the first time she’s ever spoken to you?”

  “Who?”

  “Mother.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I just brushed it off. “Listen, we’ve got more important things to worry about right now.”

  I opened up the laptop and put it beside my own system. Boost synced my computer to it and transferred all the necessary files over.

  So far, this aspect of my plan was coming to fruition. I couldn’t help but smile.

  I was getting ready to go when Kyle came home. He looked at me with all those guns and went wide-eyed.

  “Fairfax, what are you doing?” The look was one of hurt, betrayal.

  “Chance is in trouble. I have to do something. I was going to call an Uber, but I found a workaround. Would you—”

  “Are you going to use those things?”

  I looked at Boost, giving him a thumbs-up. “Yes. I’m going to play some paintball.”

  Kyle paused and nodded. He grabbed a jacket and put it around me. He wasn’t happy, and from his body language, he was coming back to this from a bad day of work.

  “Hey, Boost? Before I go, do you mind if I check my email really fast?”

  He stepped away from the desk, and I loaded up my email and social media. I hadn’t used it much since my conversion, but what few friends I had, I did like to check in on…even if they never checked in on me. Afterward, I set up the camera feed to my computer and turned on the webcam.

  I smiled, happy with what I hoped was about to happen, and Kyle took me down to his car.

  He was silent the entire time.

  When we got Snappy’s estate, he put the car in park.

  “I’m not gonna drive in there.”

  My mind started working on how to get in there. Though I couldn’t make the jump from the wall, the bars on that gate were just wide enough for me to squeeze through, even with all the weapons.

  “You don’t have to. I can make my way in.”

  “I’ll wait here for thirty minutes, okay? You do what you have to do. If you’re not back by then, I’m leaving. I’ll probably call the cops and…I don’t really want to be a part of this.”

  “I don’t want it to be like this either, but a man’s life is in danger right now. The last thing I need is the one person who is looking after me, aside from you, having what happened to Boost happen to him.”

  Kyle nodded, put on some music, and I skulked onto the estate.

  I turned on the camera I had strapped to my chest. My phone rested in a small pocket on the vest I wore.

  In one ear, I’d put in an earbud, and I called up Boost. He said, “Okay, your camera’s online and we’re ready for this. You want to do some paintball?”

  I nodded, cocking the two guns. “Oh, I am ready for some paintball.”

  I winced slightly when the front of my throat was shocked, so I turned down the intensity of the electricity. Following Chance’s methods, I walked the perimeter of Snappy’s estate, keeping an eye on Pamela’s house.

  I whispered to Boost, “Okay, everyone is in that building.”

  “Really? It’s pretty small.”

  “We’re just doing a test run on this.”

  “You said that you wanted to test this for live streaming. I hope you don’t mind, but I saw your camera was on, and the feed was linked, so I logged into my account, and…you’re actually kinda live right now.”

  I grinned. He took the bait, “Oh, that’s awesome! Let’s get going, partner!”

  My arms were pulled up and the guns were spun around my fingers. “Wow, you are really good at this.”

  “Thanks! I’m a professional.”

  I thought to myself, So was Chance.

  As I approached the back door, I noticed figures walking inside. My bet was the Dellamortes.

  Boost said, “So, do we Leeroy Jenkins this?”

  My arms came up and turned the gun sideways

  “No, no, don’t do any that stupid stuff.”

  The guns went back to vertical.

  I didn’t so much charge the door, but I did kick it open. One of the goons looked at me, perplexed.

  “Are you fuckin’ shittin’ me?”

  My finger was pressed against the trigger and three rounds, in quick succession, landed in his chest.

  “Wow! Those paintballs are really realistic!”

  “I know; it’s part of the system we’re trying out,” I lied.

  After that first shot, everyone else was alerted to me. I was a puppet on a string, but Boost was a master of puppetry. Headshot after headshot, center mass, center mass. He ducked me behind doors, behind couches,
every tactical advantage, and all he had to go off of was the camera on my chest.

  “How’re our points goin’?” he whispered in my ear. “I think we’re doing good!”

  “I think there’s a lot more downstairs.”

  As if on cue, the door to the basement burst open and a flood of armed guards came charging up. I jumped in the air, and Boost, using my arms, made short work of them.

  I actually landed on the chest of one of them and Boost put the barrel of the gun right between his eyes and pulled the trigger.

  I whispered, “Hey, these things still hurt. Be careful with that stuff.”

  “He’ll survive!”

  I winced, knowing these men were definitely not surviving this.

  However, he was at the top of the stairs and I landed on his chest, so he fell backward, and I rode him down like a surfboard. I took out two more who tried to round the corner while Boost talked about gaining style points.

  I walked down the middle of the hallway and—I don’t know how Boost saw them—as I passed by the doors, my arms flung out to the sides and fired, meaty impacts and thuds reaching my ears in response.

  Soon, I made it to the end of the hallway and kicked open the door. Chance was on the conversion table, Pamela standing over him. I raised my guns at Pamela’s head and that’s when Scratch tried to surprise me from the left.

  I put the barrel of the gun between his eyes. I glared at him but made sure my chest-cam kept Pamela in the shot.

  I hissed at Scratch, “You came to me the other day, worried. You said these guys were going to be doing terrible things, and that you wanted my help, and you lied to me. I trusted you; you used me, and people are dead now because of you.”

  Scratch looked on in shock and looked to Pamela. “Yeah, but that’s what I’m supposed to do! I’m—”

  “This isn’t a kids’ show, Scratch! People’s lives are in danger. I don’t care if you’re my foil. I don’t want to see you again. I release you from my copyright or whatever. I don’t care if you live or die, frankly. Go fade into obscurity.”

  Pamela looked over at me. She held a trocar up to Chance’s neck. He’d been knocked unconscious and lay on the table, nude.

  “You’re not supposed to lay a hand on me! You can’t do a goddamn thing!”

  “Boost, take the shot!”

  She went wide-eyed and pale when she saw I had something controlling my finger.

  “He—you said people were dead. Were we actually killing people?”

  “Boost, take the shot!”

  “I’m not gonna actually hurt anyone, especially for live streaming! You tricked me!”

  “Boost, take the fucking shot!”

  “No! I’m not gonna take the shot!”

  I blinked and realized where he was coming from. One more lie wouldn’t hurt on top of all the others. “Boost, it’s a role-play server. She’s the boss. Take the shot.”

  Pamela sneered, raising the trocar above her head.

  Eventually, I heard, “Oh! Why didn’t you say so?”

  I put a bullet between Pamela Blake’s eyes.

  Scratch screamed as she fell to the floor, body twitching.

  CHAPTER 18

  I put the guns back in their holsters and Scratch ran around the room frantically. “You killed her! You actually killed her! And the guys upstairs? Did you kill them too? What the heck are you doing?!”

  I looked at him. “Getting even. Now, get out of my way,” I said, running over to Chance, trying to shake him awake.

  It took about five minutes, but he slowly came to. When he saw me in my getup, he chuckled, “What the heck are you doing, commando?”

  I saluted him. “Rescuing a friend.”

  Scratch was having an existential crisis in the corner as I gave Chance his clothing. “Not gonna lie, if I could’ve ended up like you, it might’ve done wonders for my business.”

  “Well, I had some help on the other end. Hey, Boost?”

  “Yeah, man?”

  “I think we’re done with the test. You can head on home.”

  “Okay!”

  With that, my phone turned off and I assumed he had used my computer monitor as a gateway back to Toronto.

  I smiled at Chance. “We did it. We got her. Like it or not, it was part of the agreement I had with Snappy. I’m going to be free.”

  He rubbed his forehead and nodded. “Yeah. Good on you, kid.”

  “I’m not a kid. I’m only probably a few years younger than you.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Anyway, we’ve got pretty much all the time in the world. I don’t think anyone’s calling the cops,” I said, looking over at Scratch, “unless you’d like to, considering you’re the reason I had to come here.”

  Chance nodded. “That little son of a bitch hit me in the chest and some of the Dellamorte thugs hit me with a Taser. How’d they know I was coming?”

  I pointed to Scratch. “He’d overheard the plan and his instincts to interfere were too strong for him to resist. Frankly, I don’t know if that was part of his plan to begin with, to lure me into a false sense of security, but that’s fine. He only wanted to have sex traffickers get access to God knows who.”

  Scratch pulled on his white pompadour. “This isn’t funny! This isn’t funny at all!”

  I looked at Chance. “Well, now’s your opportunity to get all the information you need. She’s dead and her systems are wide open for you.”

  He nodded, stepping over her body and looking through the side rooms. I was looking around, trying to make sense of it all, when I spotted a computer. I booted it up and saw there was a password.

  “Damn,” I groaned.

  Chance reached into his backpack and pulled out a USB drive. “I’ve got a password breaker on here.”

  He slipped it in and rebooted the machine; it beeped a couple of times, did a few soft reboots, and finally opened up with no password prompt. “It overwrites a few sections of the BIOS, reboots as need be, and basically resets the computer to where it doesn’t need one…assuming the user is the one who did it.”

  “Nice. I could use something like that whenever I forget my own.”

  He began to look through folders and I waved him aside. “Let me handle that. You go deal with the bodies.”

  He grunted and walked off while I cruised the folders and subfolders. I heard the bodies being dragged about upstairs, and Scratch’s crying, when I found a small folder marked “Rift Transactions”.

  I opened it up and was staggered by what I saw: there were dozens of subfolders going back at least 15 years. Further exploration in the early stuff let me find the chemical concoction that allowed the process to happen. There were no indications that anything could be done to reverse-engineer it, but I did find an explanation of the transformation.

  Somehow, the rift itself poured out creative energy, the stuff that knits the atoms of toons together. The ink and solutions were put through procedures that I’d need a science degree to even read but somehow bonded with human tissue. The human DNA then absorbed that creative energy and used a matrix to create a toon within the human. What was incompatible was discarded, expelled.

  Once the process had been left to run its course, the human acted like any other toon. It seems the first couple of subjects ended up like me for about a week. Pamela thought it was a failure because they still retained their humanity.

  When one of them had an anvil dropped on him, he shook off the damage and lost a few of his idiosyncrasies. That he had picked up a few toon ones allowed Pamela to put two and two together. She had him run over with a steamroller and, before he knew it, she had her first fully converted toon. She realized she had to break the body and then the mind.

  I looked through more of the folders. About halfway through, I opened up one and saw a name I was hoping to see: Ludovic Pascu.

  “Hey, Chance, I think I—” I looked up and saw him. “I found him here, let me just open up the—”

  Next thing I
knew, he punched me with a pair of brass knuckles. I clenched my jaw and fell to the floor. He stomped on the back of my head a few times.

  “You did good, kid, but there’s a few things I didn’t tell you. I said I was hired to find him, but I never said I was hired by his family.”

  I groaned and looked up at him. “We were a team. We were going to help him.”

  “We were never going to help him.”

  “But we—”

  He kicked me in the ribs and called for Scratch. “Hey, skunky, come in here.”

  Scratch shambled in, his eyes wide, but his pupils tiny and he looked at me on the floor in pain.

  “He tried to hurt me just like he hurt Pamela.”

  Scratch shook his head. “No. No, not again! I won’t let you hurt anyone ever again!” He reached behind himself and produced a mallet.

  “Scratch, please, no!”

  He raised it over his head and slammed it on my back. I know I didn’t have a spine anymore, but I felt it break. My legs twitched. I couldn’t move them.

  He slammed it down on me again. I screamed in pain and panic.

  Chance opened up the file and chuckled. “You gotta be shittin’ me.”

  “Please, Scratch, stop!”

  He hit me again and again. I hadn’t wanted to shake off the damage this bad since that first night.

  Chance grunted and pushed Scratch away. “Leave him on the ground. If anything, when Snappy comes a-callin’, he’ll see the situation, and you can explain it to him then.”

  Scratch nodded and went off to the corner, rocking back and forth.

  “You see, Fairfax, I really did think that you and I could have been good partners. Then we came back here that first time and the Dellamortes were here. I had to kill some of them, but they recognized me. When I ran upstairs and stopped the old guy—”

  I looked at him woozily. “I heard gunshots.”

  “I told him I’d have to make it sound like I chased him off, but that’s the thing. That process you went through? I was kinda into it. I said I had plans for tonight, and that’s what I was going to do. I was planning to come here anyway. I didn’t think you’d figure a way around your damn commands, though.