JKM looked over at the Halo then each other. They didn’t know what to say so they kept their mouths shut.
“You,” The Corpus said, “I see on the news.”
JKM said, “Me?”
“You killed someone, yes?”
“Yes.”
“You beat a man to death.”
“Yes.”
“No,” the Halo said.
“No?”
“No. I did it.”
“You?”
“He said he did it to protect me. He did that for me. I’m sorry.”
The Corpus folded his arms, sat statue-still. He stayed that way as minutes passed, the two not knowing whether to wait or leave.
After ten minutes The Corpus said, “I do for you.”
“Thanks.”
“Thank you very much.”
“Not today. Tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
“When?”
“Noon. At the falls in Brutalia Park.”
“There?”
“We need enough water for this.”
“In public?”
“If you want privacy no one will watch. It will be too gross for people to watch.”
“…Okay.”
“Okay…”
“Now you can leave me alone.”
The two stood. JKM took the Halo’s hand, got them moving away. She stopped looking back, fell in beside him.
“Know what?” he said.
“Yeah I know what. We’re scared.”
“He is scary as fuck.”
41
Siren Syndicate seldom sold street shit, superior shit solely: Siren Six. It was aspirational. Not for proles. Only the upscale could afford it. Not for kids unless you were a kid with a black card. Not worldwide like Playground 14, but stronger yet healthier. Plus the brand was cooler. The Siren Syndicate was style and sex while the OSD was military-issue and fascism. Siren Six also put AXIS in the style war.
To break a new social drug you started in the clubs and got it trending. The hottest clubs were the red carpet for the drug trade. On that red carpet Ryan Seacrest didn’t ask “who” you were wearing, he asked “who” you were doing. The cool kids said AXIS. The club floors stayed packed, the beat sweaty, a sea of tweeked-up bodies hopping and bouncing. After the Siren Syndicate opened their stores inside the hot clubs, the following nights went supernova. Tourists circled the building looking for superheroes, paparazzi snapped them.
People wanted a piece of them. Wherever they turned flashbulbs popped them. Cameras stole their essence and put it on the Internet. The store was ground zero for celebrity dirt. The tabloids sent their young vultures to pin them down for questions, maybe get past their bouncers and score something off the record. Sirens bought them drinks to get them drunk, maybe drop a Ruthie to knock them out and move them to the recycling bin. The next day they’d wake up inside a dumpster.
If there was a Playground 14 presence, you out trended 14 until it looked like MySpace. You trended VIP. You were a gangster now. Club people knew who to buy and who not to buy. When the OSD didn’t like that, they started sending enforcers to the clubs. Knowing they couldn’t take on the Siren Syndicate in full force, they tried to get to them isolated, hijack one. All it took was one Siren to break the Syndicate and their problem was over. Still six Sirens swung solo. No AXIS protection for them, The Carousel drawing the line at participation, AXIS taking zero cut, AXIS offering zero support. The Sirens only had each other.
New people started showing up. Trending were Asian males in track suits. Outside a club three of them were waiting for Sailor Star.
“We are OSD.”
The other two track suits closed in around her cutting off any exit. There was a silence where nobody moved. Their Chinese faces hardened.
“Our people need to talk to you. You come with us please.”
Sailor Star said, “Thanks, but you guys don’t look promising.”
“You come with us for thirty minutes please.”
“Back off.”
“You come by choice or not by choice, you come.”
“Back off, OSD…”
“You’re coming with us.”
“Meanwhile all this is on TV,” she said. “Look.”
They looked across the street at the paparazzi shooting them. Sidewalk space cleared around her as the Chinese guys suddenly walked.
Now the Sirens were looking for Chinese guys in track suits. Next time it happened inside the club. Six Chinese guys collected around Kafka Kardashian. They were the first three guys with a new three guys. They zeroed in on her, collected.
The man got in her face. “You need to come with us. This time no way around it.”
The man raised a hand, took hold of her arm just above the elbow joint.
She shot a signal to her guys. When the Sirens ran a store in a club, they dominated until club staff took their orders, obeyed every twitch of their whims. From three directions, a tide of steroids hit the floor, moved on the six Chinese for a group bounce. She refilled her champagne glass, graded the Chinese guys. Her guys had better jiu-jitsu than their guys. It took two minutes to clear them from the floor, bounce them down the rear stairwell. By the time they reached the gravel two of them were unconscious.
The next night over the beat a cluster of male voices went up. Two Brazilian guys in the face of one of the bouncers, the three yelling. The two Brazillians were dressed like Ali G, the bouncer a super heavyweight with a shaved head. He looked like a pro. He looked like he could take the other two as they buzzed in his face like flies on a water buffalo. The verbal brawl spilled off a basketball court, went NYC versus Brutalia, U.S. versus Brazil, went louder, seconds from the first level of violence. Mermaid Gangster watched from a nearby booth. She was tuning up a Siren Six pixie with her first pixie pop and the distraction was giving her a headache.
She said to the pixie, “I’ll be right back.”
Mermaid Gangster went over to them.
“Do me a favor,” she said. “Cool it.”
One of the Brazilians said, “Stay out of it.”
The Pro turned to her. He had a booming, sandpapery voice: “I got this.”
“Then handle this.”
He looked her up and down. “What are you–the Siren Syndicate?”
She nodded.
He said, “Nobody told you, girl, but you’re nobodies.”
“We’re big in Japan.”
The other of the two Ali G’s said, “Yo, bitch, go somewhere else, bitch.”
“Yeah.” The first one flipped her the finger with both hands, said, “Fuck off, puta.”
“You three are bounced,” she said.
The Pro said, “Bounced?”
“That means you have two seconds to leave the building.”
“Fuck you,” Ali G said. “We ain’t going nowhere.”
The other bouncers still followed her every twitch. She turned, gave her guys the nod. Skin-headed, steroids dressed in downtown-black, four bouncers hit the floor like human leaf blowers. The problem was gone in ten seconds. The delete button had been pushed and the bouncing was in effect three floors down to the recycling bin.
They were quickly forgotten, trouble already following her nose elsewhere. Sometimes there was more to noise than just noise. This much noise would put up a distraction from worse noise. Like a Siren caught alone.
It was like everyone there was asleep and dreaming the club. She moved through their mass dream picking up speed, collecting the Sirens until they formed a Siren squad checking their handguns. There was no Kafka Kardashian. A quick look at the VIP floor turned up zero Kafka Kardashian.
They ruled out the elevators. In the rear corridor there was a fire door to a rear stairwell. She hung her head over the railing, spotted two people two floors down moving fast. Kafka at gunpoint. A guy behind her. The Sirens bolted down the flights four steps at a time. Reached ground floor. Running feet ahead. Made the next corner, caught a flash of them going out the next
fire door.
The fire door opened to the alley behind the club, beer bottle brown-tinted lighting, a line of tan dumpsters. There was a parked Hummer. On the rear window was a stenciled emblem Spanish words in Medieval lettering: Orden de ejecución de dominación social.
Toward it, a Latino male kept Kafka moving ahead of an Uzi. Once he got her in the Hummer it was over. The Sirens went after them. The hijacker spun with the Uzi, cut loose at the Sirens. The Sirens pulled Siren guns, returned fire. The paparazzi caught up to the scene, started shooting it. Camcorders cammed it, still cameras shot it. Flashbulbs popped like a second line of fire outside the popping of guns in a firefight. Mermaid Gangster took the lead, worked her way closer to the hijacker, moved along the line of dumpsters.
This turned into a firefight. In a firefight, in the time it takes for something to happen, it’s already happened. It had happened three times already, the bullets dissolving in Mermaid Gangster’s flesh, the wounds healing. The Uzi rattled the dumpsters until she was breathing cordite and the sting of scorched steel. Aiming was hard to do. She kept banging shots, kept metal between her and their shells, tried not to hit Kafka on the ground, the hijacker holding her by the hair, shooting one-handed.
With both hands, Kafka took hold of the hand holding her by the hair, tried to break his hold. She went into her handbag, pulled her siren samurai knife.
The hijacker stumbled to one side. He raised his arm, found the hand sliced off.
Kafka got up with the blade poised, shook the blood at him.
He freaked.
The Sirens laid down more fire. The hijacker ran through the bullets, made it to the Hummer car door, stopped four bullets.
As Mermaid Gangster took aim to bust #5, the Hummer bolted, swerved into her line of fire, cut it off. The Hummer nailed dumpster, slammed cold dumpster steel into her. She sprung away before getting pinned, lunged into the Hummer’s path. She got to running backwards, put a stream of fire at the driver’s face, hitting bulletproof glass. She made it around the first dumpster just before the Hummer blew past like a building on wheels.
Gingiri and Sailor Star fired more dents into the Hummer’s armor and glass until Captain Madame X pumped a hand bazooka, blasted the Hummer off its tires. It slammed, bounced, rolled into a wall.
“Fuck.” That wasn’t a bright red sledgehammer inside Mermaid Gangster’s chest, that was a heart. The dumpsters were a festival of Uzi holes. Her outfit had four new holes. The paparazzi were still shooting everything.
“What the fuck?” Kafka Kardashian shrieked, the hijacker’s severed fist still attached to its handful of hair atop of her head. She tried to pry it loose but the fingers wouldn’t fucking budge.
Others were arriving, bar backs, deejays, club goers. Two cops in police vests. Paparazzi shot them. The Pro bulldozed his way past everyone to get to Mermaid Gangster. He stared like confusion could burn through cement.
“What went down, MG?”
“You want to know?”
“That’s why I’m asking.”
“You got fired.”
42
The Sirens all had families that had lost a twelve year-old girl. Today they were in contact with adult women. The families had left Brutalia to keep their remaining kids from getting mysteriously transformed. If a Siren left town to visit her family, it was as a twelve year-old again. Sirens didn’t do a lot of family reunions.
Gingiri’s mother was the last to leave Brutalia, still calling her Nicole. She had visited Nicole in Atlanta mostly to see her as a twelve year-old again. She took pictures. She wasn’t ready for a move to Atlanta, her nursing job was in Brutalia and she hadn’t saved enough to leave it and it was no time to be jobless. But she was a year from being ready when she would move to Atlanta and get a place where they would live and she would raise Nicole. But Gingiri killed that plan.
“You killed that plan, didn’t you?” Mom said.
“Sorry.”
“I’m leaving anyway. I’d rather be back in Atlanta. I’m not coming back. So…I guess you could visit.”
“I will.”
“Will you be okay?”
“Yes.”
“You become me sometimes don’t you?”
“I just found I can do that.”
“Like…inhabit…my body?”
“Yeah but only with you and the Sirens.”
“You can become me?”
“I can share you with you.”
“You can become another person?”
“Kinda.”
“Jesus Christ, Nicole.”
“I used to be part of your body anyway so you should be used to it.”
“So now we’ve never been both farther apart or closer.”
“That’s well put. I guess so.”
“When you’re me, are the you you or are you this you?”
“What?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I’m this me, Gingiri. I can only do it where powers exist.”
“I have to get back to planet Earth.”
“I get that.”
“You’re still a little girl.”
“No I’m not.”
“Do you have a period?”
“Of course, you know that.”
“Do you think about boys…about men yet?”
“Yes.”
“Liar.”
“It’s true. I think about men. We’re all grown women. We’re adults. We’re war vets.”
“You grew up too soon.”
“I’m only a few years from this age anyway.”
“What in the world made me bring us to this city? The job I’m giving up anyway, that’s what. But I could stay for you. I could.”
“I’m grown.”
“I see that. So…this is my chance to get back to the real world. I’m a real person and I need a real world. I can’t stay.”
“I can’t leave.”
“If you ever need anything ever…”
“There’s twenty thousand in an account in your name. More later.”
“I told you I don’t take Syndicate money, Nicole. Get a job, we’ll talk.”
It took five minutes to break Mom down enough to agree to take the money but the account had to go. Whatever. By the time Mom stepped on the plane Gingiri was exhausted.
Now she was alone in the world. Except a psychic was never alone. That was the point.
There was My Little Yellow War. He was a psychic-hating psychic. You tried to tell others but they couldn’t get it.
There was My Little Yellow Virus.
Annie Angel had been a mass dead-whisperer. She was dead-whispering 300 people in Brutalia Park when she was hit by the yellow virus. At a home ever since, unable to speak or tie her shoelaces. Dead psychics started turning up around the city, their neon half-moons switched off.
The Sirens had made a pact to lose their first virginity to the one guy worthy of it, Dr. Peepshow. He was a teenage nudist who only wore a magician’s cape and black cowboy boots. His superpowers were pretzel-like contortion and penis puppetry with no hands. He was in the Circus of Brutalia.
In his red tent Gingiri had been in bed with Dr. Peepshow when in her mind she felt someone’s psyche turn yellow then go dark. She could not help springing from the burgundy sheets, the boy’s confused body, spilling from his tent.
My Little Yellow War was close, its heat searing her naked back. She jumped into a psychic foxhole, pulled herself in deep as the black iron airship of the War passed through her psyche, its searchlights sweeping the battlefield for psychics. She held her breath with both hands. The voice of the War broadcast in her head.
PSYCHICS MUST DIIIIIIIIIIE DIE PSYCHICS MUST DIIIIIIIIIIIIIE DIE PSYCHICSMUSTDIIIIIIIIIIIIIIE DIE PSYCHICS MUST DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIE!
Two years later My Little Yellow Virus appeared in Gingiri’s brain with its signature, everything going black, the My Little Yellow War logo flashing in yellow; a chime sounded then her vision switched to yellow as if she wore deep
yellow-lensed goggles. The virus took out the part of her brain that activated flight. She had done it a million times but now she had no concept of what was done or how. Now she was falling from the sky straight down, her body turning end over end, the cityscape far below then high above then far below, expanding as she fell toward it. The street high above ran with cars and buses. The street far below ran with cars and buses. She landed halfway atop a city bus, shattered a window, bounced into the street. A second city bus ran its front tires over her. In a wide pool of blood, every bone in her body was shattered, her skull crushed, her face was jelly. The regeneration took three weeks; it took two weeks for her to look at her face.
In Atlanta there was no little yellow war, no little yellow virus to strike her. Now that Gingiri had bought back in, she had to fight the War.
A psychic with the handle Your Geek Death had been the war front against Yellow War. White helmeted and goggled, he lived inside his psychic anti-aircraft gun turret out to blast Yellow War from the skies.
Gingiri found him in a psych ward naked and in the fetal position wearing a WW1 doughboy helmet. He wore a colostomy bag but it was tubed into his left ear.
His eyes focused on her face. From his lips came a word loop: YOU’RE NEXT DIE YOU’RE NEXT DIE YOU’RE NEXT DIE YOU’RE NEXT,…
Yellow had turned Your Geek Death into a booby trap for Gingiri.
Her body collapsed at his feet as it was bombarded with My Yellow Virus. By then she had made a total jump into Mermaid Gangster’s psyche almost knocking her off her Siren cycle.
43
The Corpus knitted his large hands, cracked his knuckles, rotated his neck.
On the cold stones of Brutalia Park, JKM lie nude on his back. The Halo lie beside him nude.
The Halo said, “We can’t do this.”
“We’re here, let’s do it.”
“This is insane.”
“There is no sane way to do this.”
“Not this way.”
“What other way do we have?”
“The real world way.”
“We are not in the real world.”
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