High Stakes: A Wild Cards Novel

by George R. R. Martin

  Joey smirked. She held up a single finger, but not her pointer.

  “This information is above your pay grade, but it’s nothing about her body that truly needs healing. It’s her mind, and that’s a complicated thing. I don’t—”

  “Not complicated,” Olena said. The ace didn’t seem to invoke the same timidity in her. “Simple.” She placed her hands on either side of Nurassyl’s head, roughly where his shoulders should have been. “He’s a healer. Body. Mind. No difference to him. I know this. He took the madness out of me. I don’t even remember it. Nothing.”

  “You don’t remember it?” Babel didn’t seem to think that was a good thing. “That won’t do. Mollie needs to remember. She needs to know what’s happening and why and how urgent the situation is. If this healing results in amnesia, there is no deal.”

  Marcus found his voice. “Screw that! The deal is already the deal. We brought him to you, showed you what he could do. We’ve held up our side of this.” Looking to Nurassyl, he said, “You can heal more people, right? Make Bugsy better? Soothe Mollie’s mind? Not take away all the memories, but just make her a little better?”

  The boy blinked his large eyes. He smiled. In what sounded to Marcus like perfect mid-Atlantic American English, he said, “Yes, Marcus. I can do it.”

  “Good boy,” Marcus said. He wanted to hug the kid. And why not? He did hug the kid. “So, Babel, we’ve got a deal. Nurassyl heals your aces. You let his family and his entire village in here. We’ll stay out of your way. That’s the deal, though. Right, Nurassyl? It’s the village or nothing.”

  Nurassyl nodded. “Village or nothing,” he said. He primly folded his tentacles together and waited, his big eyes on Babel, making it clear just where he stood.

  Bugsy laughed. “He’s a cheeky little negotiator, this one. Admit it, Babel, he’s got a good hand here.”

  “You want to save the world?” Marcus asked, feeling the momentum of it. “Then you need this kid. What other choice do you have?”

  Babel was a long time trying to come up with one before she snapped, “Fine. Bring her in.”

  Bugsy began, “Hey, I said I was—”

  “Bring her in!” Babel repeated. “Mollie first. Lesser actors after.”

  Olena said, “Wait. You didn’t say you agreed. You must say it. Nurassyl does his part. The village is safe. Say it.”

  For some reason, Babel seemed to dislike Olena as much as Olena was uncowed by her. She grimaced, but eventually said, “As you say, I agree.”

  When they brought her in, Marcus barely recognized Mollie. Last time he’d seen her, in the casino, she’d been a cocksure countrified bitch who had looked the jokers she’d transported straight in the eyes. She flipped off any who returned her gaze too long. Not anymore. Now she was as scratched and bruised as Joey had been. She looked drenched in fatigue, barely able to walk with the aid of two nurses. Despite that, her eyes bounced around the room with a crazed energy. Every time they touched on something she flinched. She looked ready to jump out of her skin, ravaged and frightened, remorseful and on the verge of both rage and utter collapse.

  Anyone could see that. Marcus saw more, though. He recognized the horror that wafted off her. It hit him in the gut, made his skin crawl, shot his long tail through with adrenaline, with the urgent desire to flee. His mind flared full of horrible thoughts, the sort of things that had clawed at him in Talas, brutal, senselessly violent, grotesque. He wanted to consume each thought, but he also felt like vomiting. All of this, brought on just by the sight of her.

  Fortunately, she didn’t have the same effect on Nurassyl. Full of compassion, the boy said, “She is not well. Come. Bring her to me.” He peeled his tentacled hands away from his chest and beckoned to her.

  “What the fuck is that?” Mollie snapped. “What the fuck are you doing?” With a sudden burst of energy, she tried to squirm away from the nurses. A big man closed on her from behind, trying to calm her even as he gripped her in the vise of his burly arms. This was not starting well.

  “Don’t hurt her,” Nurassyl said. He looked at Babel. “I will be her friend. Let me talk to her. Just me. Can you do that?”

  Babel pursed her lips. That was all the answer she gave, until the auditory ambience of the room changed entirely. Marcus hadn’t been able to understand half the people around them before, but now he couldn’t understand anybody. Every voice speaking became a garbled jumble that didn’t even resemble language anymore.

  “What the fuck?” Marcus turned to Olena. She looked back at him, opened her mouth, and let out a barrage of nonsense. It must have been Babel using her power. He tried to explain this to her, but Olena grimaced and put her hand over his mouth, shutting him up. Together, they turned and—like everyone else—watched Nurassyl and Mollie. They, apparently, were the only ones who could still communicate.

  Nurassyl was speaking. Though his words were as incomprehensible as anybody else’s, Marcus could imagine the gentling effect of them. He spoke as much with his round eyes and with the gentle motions of the tentacles. He seemed to float toward Mollie, propelled by the hundreds of nodules he had instead of feet. For her part, Mollie stopped fighting and started listening. She said something, and after a few exchanges her face relented. She let the nurses guide her to a low stool, and soon Nurassyl was right beside her. Mollie flinched back when he reached for her, but didn’t really pull away. The moment his tentacles caressed her temples, her mouth dropped open, her face softened, and her eyes took on a faraway glaze.

  The world snapped back to normal when Babel said, “Remember, only ease her troubles. Not too much.”

  Nurassyl turned and looked at her. “She has so much pain,” he said.

  “I know. She’s got pains that began before any of this. Just don’t go too far.”

  Nurassyl turned back to Mollie. He spoke to her, low enough that Marcus couldn’t hear what he said. Mollie listened. She nodded often. At some point, tears welled in her eyes and cut tracks down her cheeks. Watching, Marcus knew they were the good kind. He glanced at the aces and the watching nurses and soldiers. They were all transfixed, even Babel.

  Eventually, Nurassyl plucked the tentacles of one hand away. A moment later, he withdrew the others.

  Mollie grabbed him, desperately. “Please, don’t stop!” she gasped. “Take it all away. Please…”

  “No!” Babel snapped. “That’s enough, Mollie. I need your mind sharp. I need you to remember. It’s the only way you’ll understand the things you’ll need to do.” There was something close to compassion in her voice as she said this, but it dropped away when she began to give orders. “Take her away. Let her rest. Give her something to eat. And then we go at it again.”

  Mollie wailed as the attendants started to lead her away. “Afterward,” she said. “After I’ve done it, then you’ll take it all away. You will, won’t you? Tell me you will.”

  “Yes, Mollie,” Nurassyl said, “I will do that for you. After.”

  That calmed her enough that she let herself be led away. “Hey,” Bugsy said, slipping his emaciated form into the seat Mollie had just vacated, “I’m up next! Return me to my normal grandeur, please.”

  Babel rolled her eyes and started to leave.

  “Hey!” Marcus called. “Nurassyl did his part. Now you do yours. Let my jokers in.”

  “Your jokers? What are you—Moses?”

  “It’s something to aspire to.” For some reason, Marcus didn’t feel as intimidated by her. Maybe it was the look of awe he’d seen on her face as Nurassyl worked, the knowledge that she’d needed a joker and knew it.

  “Fine.”

  As Babel issued orders for the jokers to be brought inside and located somewhere remote, Marcus bent to be closer to Nurassyl’s level. “When just you two could talk, what did you say to Mollie to make her calm down?”

  “Just who I was and what I could do for her. Nice things. I made her not afraid.”

  Marcus smiled. “Yes, you did. You did more than tha
t, too.”

  Babel cleared her throat. When Marcus looked at her, she waved her phone, impatient. Marcus said the last few things he wanted to before the language barrier dropped down between them again. “Nurassyl, you did good. For the village. Maybe for the whole world. I told you that you were an ace. See? Today you proved it.”

  Marcus looked at Babel. She nodded, looking at him differently than she had when she first saw him. She walked away, and Marcus prepared to go with the soldiers to get the villagers. Olena started to come with him, but stopped. “Shit,” she said.

  “What?”

  “My father.”

  Following her gaze, Marcus spotted him. Vasel had just entered the big room, propelled by a phalanx of suits and officers. Russians, he imagined. They cut through the crowd in a wedge, making people clear the way for them. He barked something at Olena, motioning for her to come to him.

  “What does he want?” Marcus asked.

  “I don’t know.” Olena considered it for a moment. “Go ahead and get the villagers. I’ll talk to him.”

  “Wait. What are going to say?”

  She smiled, leaned up onto her toes, and kissed him. “Don’t worry. I’ll tell him to piss off. Him and all the goons.” And then she was gone, walking toward the Russian contingent at a leisurely pace that obviously annoyed Vasel.

  That’s my girl, Marcus thought, and then he squirmed to catch up with the soldiers waiting for him.

  Later, she remembered her name. Remembered other stuff, too. Remembered everything she wanted to forget. Like licking the stump of Joey’s severed finger like a lollipop, the sensation of eyebrow hairs caught in her teeth—

  Mollie rolled over and vomited explosively into a wastepaper basket. Stomach acid scorched the interior of her throat, while the convulsions irritated bruises on her neck. She probably had a new set of throat bruises, she realized, where a zombie had damn near choked the life out of her. The need to retch didn’t subside quickly or easily. But it did, eventually.

  She could hear her own breathing. The blood pulsing through her ears in time to her heartbeats. When she shifted, the bandages on her face rasped across a blanket, loud as a gunshot.

  The sane world was so quiet. So calm compared to the howling madness.

  Strange that the world could be so quiet in its final hours. She’d have thought the end of the world would be louder.

  Footsteps. The floor creaked under a man’s weight. He crouched on the floor beside her. A whiff of aftershave tickled her nose, roiled her stomach: Billy Ray. That was his name. He touched her shoulder, gently. Mollie pretended not to feel it. But he persisted. “Hungry? The Russians brought MREs, the very best dehydrated borscht rubles can buy. And we found some instant lunches stashed in one of the cabinets. You should rehydrate.”

  He had a slight lisp. But it was already less pronounced than earlier, when he’d been talking to Bubbles.

  Mollie was in the warehouse, she realized. In the Cosmodrome. She lay on a cot, beneath a scratchy wool blanket.

  Steam wafted against her face, carrying with it the umami scent of instant noodles. In her mind, it became a moist tendril draped across her face, grasping, wafting corpse-stink eddies of an otherworldy fog against her unprotected flesh. Mollie screamed. Flailed. Sent the Styrofoam cup tumbling. It splashed on Billy Ray, Mollie, the blanket. Most of it ended up on the floor. He cleaned the mess without comment, after which he left the container for her. She drank what little broth was left. It was salty. She vomited it into the basket almost as quickly as she ingested it.

  A while later, he tried again: “How’re you doing, kiddo?”

  “How…” Mollie trailed off, coughing. The screaming had given her a voice like Tom Waits. She swallowed blood, and a gobbet of she-didn’t-know-what, and tried again. “How the fuck do you think I’m doing? I ate somebody’s eyebrow. Her eyebrow, for God’s…” Mollie rolled over, retching. Her empty stomach had nothing to offer, but she coughed up dark bitter bile. The violent heaving splashed acid into her sinuses.

  Billy Ray handed her a Kleenex. She blew her nose, wiped her mouth. Frowned. Tried to fish out whatever was caught in her teeth. Pulled a bristly eyebrow hair from between her incisors.

  Threw up all over again.

  Even Billy Ray looked a little ill.

  When the urge to vomit finally subsided, and Mollie’s body couldn’t force another drop of fluid past her lips, she lay on the floor limp as a rag doll. Billy Ray took the sloshing, stinking wastebasket and disappeared. He returned a few minutes later, and set it down next to Mollie’s elbow. Giving the room a few sniffs, he wrinkled his nose.

  What a pussy. A little bit of human puke? That was a fucking rose garden compared to the eldritch-charnel-house smell washing over the world in Horrorshow’s wake. It was getting closer, every second, tick tick tick, but she could already smell it, as though the evil had permanently etched the insides of her nostrils.

  Her face ached. It had for a while, she realized. But she’d been too busy sicking up to notice. Mollie touched the bandages. She only vaguely remembered hands raking her face. Didn’t really feel it at the time, but then she had been hopped up and giddy with supernatural ultraviolence. The bandages were bigger than she realized at first—shit. She frowned, and felt something tugging at her skin. Stitches. Joey had probably torn off half her face. Even if she hadn’t been wreathed in Horrorshow’s influence, too, Mollie had given her plenty of incentive.

  Still rubbing the bandages, Mollie asked, “How is she?”

  Billy Ray swallowed. He knew whom she meant. “Joey’ll be okay.”

  “But she isn’t right now.”

  “You’ll both need some surgery when this is over. If you want it.”

  Mollie sat up. Hugged her knees.

  “If I want to not look like somebody tried to tear my face off, you mean? Gee, that’s a tough one. I’m sure Joey is right now weighing the pros and cons of looking like somebody took a giant fucking bite out of her face.”

  The SCARE agent sat at the foot of the cot. He didn’t try to hug her or touch her or even try to talk. He just sat there, breathing the same air and asking nothing more, because he understood that was the best thing he could do.

  He was thinking about his wife. Mollie could tell. The worry lay over him like a pall.

  “It happened again,” she said.

  “What did?”

  “The part where I became a murderous cannibal rage monster fueled by supernatural evil.”

  “You knew it was going to happen, but you overcame your fear and you helped us anyway. And it worked. We rescued Ana Cortez.”

  “That has got to be one of the least convincing pep talks in history. I dropped a goddamned Winnebago on one of your guys. Did he … is he okay?”

  “No.” He didn’t hedge, didn’t hesitate, didn’t clear his throat. Mollie reminded herself that above all else he was a federal agent. And that she was a criminal. Then again, distinctions like that meant fuck-all when the world was soon to be absorbed into the Face-Eating Cannibal Flashmob Dimension.

  “The others? Did I kill anybody else?”

  “No. They’re fine. A little freaked out, but they’re fine. You scared the hell out of them.”

  “Yeah, well, those pussies can man up. It’s not exactly a Disney movie of unicorns and rainbows playing on the insides of my eyelids right now, you know.”

  He nodded. “You said something strange at one point.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “It sounded like something about the filth of a Frankenstein god-machine, or some such. Do you remember? I was just wondering what that meant.”

  Grasping for understanding. He was desperate to understand what his wife was experiencing.

  “It meant I’d gone so incredibly batshit that I was completely and utterly out of my fucking mind. I can’t begin to figure out what that might have meant and I sure as hell don’t care to try. But you can bet it made complete sense to me in the moment. And that’s p
art of what’s so horrible about this.” It took several deep breaths before she could get her raspy voice and the tears under control. “You don’t know the darkness is taking you because you’re so mad—crazy mad, furious mad—that you don’t realize anything has changed. The rage makes so much sense when you’re drowning in it.” She hugged her knees tighter, folding herself into the tightest ball she could. More memories came rushing back in horrifying detail. A sob escaped; the struggle to hold it in felt like pulling a muscle in her chest. Several more followed in its wake. Mollie had to swallow down gorge before finishing her thought aloud. “Cutting off Joey’s finger, then snatching it off the floor and licking—” She reached for the basket. Dry-heaved. “—licking the stump clean made the utmost sense in the moment. It was what I had to do, the only thing I could do. I did it because from within that fishbowl it was obviously—obviously—the only sane thing to do.” Another bubble of gorge stung her acid-raw throat. She coughed. Though her voice was but a rasp, she continued. “But you know what makes it even worse? Knowing that I savagely and gleefully mutilated somebody with you and God knows who else watching. I feel naked, like the entire world saw me lose my shit. It’s worse than naked. Naked would be just my body, but you, Joey, and SCARE and Babel and the Committee and the even fucking Russian army, you all saw the inside of my mind at its most broken.”

  The satellite map projected on Babel’s wall showed a large swath of Kazakhstan. Somebody had superimposed a large oblong crosshatched in red and black; this was labeled SHADOW ZONE on the PowerPoint slide. Best estimates put it less than a day from engulfing the Baikonur Cosmodrome and the nuclear weapons stored there.