I’ve seen this face before.
“You,” I whisper.
The Dictator smiles and bows. His gray eyes flash. I thought maybe I recognized the voice, too, that moment in Gulliver’s when he came on TV. Now I realize why. I thought I had done enough that day at the zoo to make him forget about me, but I guess I was wrong.
“Not just me,” the Dictator says, sweeping his arm to indicate the rest of the room. “All of us.” The rest of the lights suddenly blink to life, and I see that we are far from alone. I count the guards first, a dozen of the Dictator’s henchmen, buttoned to the collar and outfitted with rifles. A couple more are occupied at the banks of computers, clattering away at the keys, metal heads bobbing up and down.
And another man. Bound and gagged, strapped to a chair same as me. His frond-covered shirt is torn half open, and he’s no longer wearing any shoes. He sits beside a workbench, much like the one back in his basement at home—before it blew up, at least. There is a bag sitting on top of the bench that I recognize. He doesn’t appear to be hurt, though the guard standing beside him could change that in a heartbeat. I feel myself slump in relief, or as much as I can with all this rope twisted around me. When he sees me, my father tries to speak, but the bandanna around his mouth makes it impossible.
“Let him go!” I shout, bucking against the chair again, though all I manage to do is snap my head back and forth, sending sharper pains down my neck and goading the elephants on again.
The Dictator stands before me, mask in his hand, entertained by my gyrations, judging by his smile. I kind of expected him to be disfigured somehow. Scarred or burned or noseless. All Phantom of the Opera melted flesh and whatnot, but the man is just as handsome and clean-cut as the first time I bumped into him.
“Of course . . . once our work is finished, I will let him go.”
“Right,” I fire back. “Why should I believe you?”
“Why shouldn’t you? Am I really so different from him?” The Dictator points over at Dad. “Am I that much less trustworthy than the man who calls himself your father? Or the thug who calls himself your friend? Do you trust me less than Tony Romano? Is it because I wear a mask? At least I’ve never lied to you. You’re still alive. So is your father. I haven’t broken any promises.”
“I still don’t believe you.”
“You’re too young to know what to believe in, Michael. But don’t worry. By the time we are finished, you will.”
“Why don’t you look me in the eye and tell me that?” I say. But the Dictator grins and continues to look over my shoulder, the way he has since the mask came off. He knows. Of course he knows.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” he says. “But you need to save your energy for what’s coming.”
“I’ll never help you,” I say, a little surprised at how easily the words come. I’m not sure I believe it—I’m strapped to a chair in the middle of an underground lair with a psychopath breathing down my neck and armed guards all around—it’s not as if I’ve got a lot of leverage..
The Dictator sets his mask on the floor and slowly walks around the chair so he’s standing behind me. I can no longer see him, which totally freaks me out. I can see the look in my father’s eyes, though, and that freaks me out even more.
Fingers suddenly weave into my hair, taking fistfuls and jerking my head backward. The pain sharpens as my head presses against the metal. I am staring at the Dictator’s upside-down face, the man still looking past my chin, never in the eyes.
“Do you know what power is, Michael?”
I think about the crimes the Dictator has committed so far. Banks and jewelry stores. The hit on the police station to get more guns, probably to rob more banks and jewelry stores. Round and round it goes. It seems to all boil down to one thing in the end.
“Money?” I manage to choke out. I can feel my hair stretching at the roots, pain blazing across my scalp.
“Pffffff,” he says, rolling his eyes.
I didn’t know supervillains said pffffff.
“Money is a fence,” he scoffs, “nothing more. You of all people should know that. It keeps the rabble out. No, Michael. Real power is control. Of your life. Your surroundings. The people. The environment. Money is useful only to the extent that it can help you to establish that control.” He releases me, and my head snaps forward again. I feel like my entire skull is on fire. The Dictator circles back around the chair, facing me again. “How much did you pay Tony to come along with you today? And all it took for Mickey to turn on him was the promise of control. Money can build you a lair or buy you an army, but it doesn’t guarantee dominance.” The Dictator looks down on me again. His face is set in a snarl. The more he talks, the uglier he gets. I’m starting to prefer him with his mask on.
“Even with money, there is still so much that can’t be dictated, Michael. So many choices, see? So much potential for rebellion.”
I nod, even though I don’t see. I just don’t want him to jerk my head back again. I think my hair is throbbing.
“We aren’t so different, you and I,” he says. And somehow that hurts just as much as him jerking my head around. He gestures to the guards surrounding us. “I can be persuasive when I want to be. But my methods are much too complicated. Take Number Forty-Six here.” The Dictator makes a motion, and one of those guards steps up next to him. He is massive—a slab of pure muscle barely captured in a black leather uniform. The cold steel machine gun hangs obediently by his side. The man’s lips are pressed tight, snapped together like Legos.
“Do you know how hard it was to get him to obey the simplest of commands? First I had to kidnap him. Then I had to insert the microchip into his skull that connected him to my mind-control device, which cost millions of dollars, by the way, and requires constant maintenance. Then there’s the hours upon hours of programming, brainwashing, memory restructuring—I could go on, but you get the idea. It’s exhausting. And I had to do it for each of them. One by one.” He pushes a finger into the henchman’s chest with each word—one by one. Number Forty-Six doesn’t budge an inch. “But you . . . you make it so simple. Just a few magic words, and voilà, your wish is their command.”
“It’s not that easy,” I croak. Though if I could ever get this maniac to look me in the eyes, I’d certainly give it a try. But he obviously knows more about me than I do about him.
“Don’t try to fool me. I know what you are capable of.”
I look over at Dad. Dad, who yelled at me for telling Zach about my power. Did he tell the Dictator about me before or after he was captured? Did they beat it out of him? Was that part of the payment? The Dictator follows my gaze and shakes his head. “Don’t blame your father for everything,” he says.
Dad lets his head drop. He’s only bound to his chair by his wrists—but the man standing next to him is incentive enough to keep still. My father’s not a fighter. At least I can say I’ve shot somebody. A real toe killer. Still, if he could somehow get free, wrestle the gun away from the guard . . .
The thought of my dad as an action hero almost makes me laugh.
“You see,” the Dictator continues, “There is nothing extraordinary about me. Yes, I have a genius IQ, a burning passion, and a vision for a better world, but I don’t have your gift. My father wasn’t a telepath.”
“How do you know about my father?” I say, snapping back to those gray eyes.
The Dictator kneels down and whispers in my ear. “She told me all about him. You too, son.”
She. My mother. The woman I never knew. So she was the one. She had connections. She was ambitious. When she left us, there was no telling where she went.
Or who she would have run into.
“People like us,” the Dictator explains, “our circles overlap. Your mother had a history. It didn’t take much to get her to share.”
“What did you do to her?” I ask, suddenly imagining the worst. The Dictator throws up his hands, pleading innocence.
“I didn’t do anything
. I let her follow me for a while and then set her loose, though at the rate she was going, I don’t think she was bound to last much longer. Your mother was misguided, Michael. A lost and wandering soul. She didn’t recognize the value of what she had in your father, what she had in you. But I do. In you I see a whole new world.” The Dictator smiles, revealing a row of polished ivory too white to be real. Then he bends down to retrieve his mask, his loyal guard standing beside him.
This is my chance. I hiss to get Number Forty-Six’s attention. He looks me in the eyes, just for a second, but that’s all I need.
“Stop him!” I command, making the demand before I’m even sure I’ve got him fully under my control. “Shoot him! Free yourself!” It’s a desperate move, I know, but I think . . . I can’t be sure . . . but I think maybe I see something change in the henchman’s face, a shift in the eyes or a twitch of the mouth. The hand that is holding the rifle trembles, fingers clench. He turns to the Dictator just as the man is standing up, his silver mask back in hand. The brainwashed soldier actually starts to raise his gun.
“Number Forty-Six!” the Dictator shouts.
The behemoth instantly lowers his rifle and snaps back to attention, eyes fixed back on the wall behind me. I feel all the air go out of the room.
“Number Forty-Six . . . shame on you,” the Dictator chastises. “You were going to shoot me, weren’t you?”
“No, sir,” the guard barks.
The Dictator clicks his tongue. “Oh, I think you were. I’m not sure I can trust you, Number Forty-Six. I can’t have people I don’t trust in my organization. Trust is crucial. Isn’t that right, Michael?”
A pocket of worms suddenly opens in my stomach. I can see where this is headed. I’m afraid to say anything that will make it worse. I’m afraid I already have.
“So how about you shoot yourself instead,” the Dictator commands.
There is a pause—a glossy-eyed, unblinking pause. Then suddenly the guard raises his rifle and turns the barrel of it on himself, pressing the muzzle beneath his own chin. A man I don’t even know, who may or may not have been a criminal when the Dictator found him and stuck a chip in his head, who might even have a family out there somewhere, wondering where he’s been the past few weeks or months or years—this man is about to take his own life, just to prove a point.
The Dictator shakes his head. “No, no, no. Through the heart, please, Number Forty-Six. I don’t want you to ruin the hardware implanted in your skull. It’s terribly expensive and I can always reprogram it for another.”
The barrel of the gun slips down until it is pointed at the man’s chest. The Dictator nods appreciatively as Number Forty-Six reaches for the trigger.
“No, don’t!” I shout.
The Dictator raises a hand, and the guard stops. I stare at them both in disbelief. “Tell him to put the gun down. Please.”
Another motion from the Dictator, and Number Forty-Six shoulders his weapon, snapping back to attention. The Dictator turns back to me, smiling. Smug.
“You’re a monster,” I whisper. “You would have just shot one of your own guards. . . .”
“Of course not,” the Dictator says. “I would have made one of my own guards shoot himself.” He turns back to the henchman and points to one of the halls beside us. “Report to Number Seven for reprogramming,” he orders.
The guard salutes briskly and then marches off toward one of the open doors without giving us so much as a second glance. The Dictator watches him go and then takes a step closer to me, bending over so I can smell his breath. Wintergreen.
“That is power,” he whispers. He nods his head toward my father, still bound and gagged no more than thirty feet from me. The only one in the room who will look me in the eyes.
And I realize that he has me. That I’m completely trapped. If it was just me, I could resist. Maybe. I would try, at least. But he has me because he has both of us. And whatever he needs me to do, I will do it. For both of us.
The Dictator tucks his mask under his arm and checks his watch. His hair is a little mussed, and he smoothes it with one swipe. “Twenty minutes,” he says. “Time to show you what your dad’s been working so hard on.”
I look down at my shoes. Looks like my luck’s run out.
LIGHTS, CAMERA, AND A WHOLE LOT OF ACTION
He tells me the plan. From start to finish.
That’s what I never understood about people like him. Why they always have to let you in on all their dirty little secrets. I suppose in my case, it makes sense. Turns out I’m an integral part of the process. But it’s not just that. I think he’s actually looking for my approval. For me to tell him what a genius he is.
For brainwashing a small army of henchmen, using technology that my professor father invented years ago, before I was even an Edson by association.
For fashioning an elaborate underground lair in the middle of a cornfield.
For pirating a satellite so that he can broadcast his message to the living rooms of ordinary schmucks whenever he wants.
For hunting the two of us down and suckering Dad in with the promise of millions for one little box—money that my father dreamed would take us far, far away.
For kidnapping Dad to make sure he got the job finished in time and to act as bait to lure me here once my father realized what was really going on. To use him as leverage against me. Because, as the Dictator makes abundantly clear, it is both of our lives at stake, and I will have to watch my father go first.
And now, finally, he has everything he needs, including the contraption on top of my head. He shows it to me before he straps it on. It doesn’t look at all the same as it did the first time I tried it. Gone is the metal spaghetti strainer, replaced with a shimmering circlet that nestles perfectly on my head like a crown. Gone are the obnoxious wires and the suction cups, somehow now integrated into the thin metal strip itself. Of the original invention, only the box remains, polished to a gleaming obsidian, attached to the back of the apparatus, half hidden by my mop of hair. It’s heavy; I have to strain to keep my chin up.
Turns out my father has been working on this particular box for a while. Long enough for someone like the Dictator to take notice. To germinate the seed of a master plan.
I don’t think he’s going to ask me to make him pee his pants.
“The neural amplifier,” the Dictator coos as he secures it to my head. “It takes your natural mental ability and magnifies it, allowing it to project over miles and making you exponentially more convincing than you could ever be on your own. Your father thought he was building it for me, but as it turns out, I don’t actually have any superpowers.” The Dictator shrugs. “I’m not an extraordinary hiccup of nature. I’m just an ordinary guy with a zombie army, a hoard of cash, and a big dream. But you . . . you can convince just about anyone of anything—at least now you can.”
As long as I look them in the eyes, I think, but that’s what the camera is for. Two of the Dictator’s goons are setting it up in front of us. Another is rigging spotlights. My five minutes of fame are being cued. The Dictator pulls up his chair and sits down next to me, and I suddenly feel like a guest on the most demented talk show in history.
“With the neural amplifier, your control will be instant, all consuming. It will harness your brainwaves, those magnificent mental manipulations of yours, and project them across the entire city. Of course, not everyone will be watching,” the Dictator muses, “but if I can get even half of New Liberty pledging their allegiance, I can use them to . . . persuade the rest.”
That’s the plan. I do what I do. The box on the back of my head makes what I do a thousand times stronger, projecting it beyond the underground walls of this underground lair that is a lair and not just a converted basement. The camera ensures I have the city’s attention, and before you know it, the Dictator gets an army.
I picture it: a mob half a million strong chanting his name, parading down the streets, breaking down doors and busting through windows, corra
lling the uninitiated. Banners and torches. Burned-out cars. His metal face flying on flags draped from rooftops. A revolution, he called it, though in my mind it looks more like an apocalypse.
“And this is only the beginning,” he continues with eager eyes and smacking lips. “A test run, really. After this we can make modifications. Increase the amplification. Start broadcasting on a much wider scale. Which reminds me,” he adds, leaning over to me, “how is your Chinese?” Before I can answer, he shakes his head. “We can worry about that later. Speaking of which . . .” The corners of his mouth twitch. “You still need your lines.”
The Dictator snaps his fingers again, and another of his masked henchmen comes shambling up with oversize index cards in his hands. This is scripted television.
“Let’s do a dry run, shall we?”
I look at the cards. It’s a sizeable stack. A big speech. I can’t give it, but I can’t not give it. I can’t hand this maniac sitting beside me a gigantic army of brainwashed bystanders. But if I don’t, I don’t know what the Dictator will do to me. Or to Dad.
All I know is that this completely psycho steel-faced freak is wrong. So wrong. Power is recognizing that you have a choice.
The trouble is making it.
“Don’t worry about tone,” the Dictator instructs. “Let’s just make sure it flows.”
I look at the first card. My throat is raw. My voice is all croaks and squeaks. I think about Zach making rat faces at me. I hope he’s all right.
The Dictator shakes his head. “Enunciate,” he says.
“‘The Dictator is your ruler,’” I say, trying again, reading off the card, hearing the tremor in my own voice. “‘You will do whatever he commands.’” There is more. So much more. At least twenty cards’ worth. Orders to gather cash and valuables. To arm themselves with whatever weapons they can find. To apprehend anyone who hasn’t sworn allegiance to the Dictator, with extreme force if necessary—a line I stumble over twice. I look over at Dad again. I want to tell him I’m sorry, but I think he understands. “‘All hail the Dictator,’” I finish.
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