It doesn’t slow him down much. He drives downward, hands still scrabbling for a grip. Then he finds one—around my throat.
He starts choking me, going for the kill.
I punch him twice in the head. It’s like hitting a cast-iron skillet. I try to fill his brain with spiders, but he shakes it off. He knows it’s not real. I feel the glow of triumph start to build from him. He figures he can take whatever I dish out until he crushes my throat.
So I decide, finally, to fight him on his own terms.
I slide my right hand between his arms and find the edge of his collar. I get the left in there as well, and I cross my arms and start pulling.
I’ve just turned the collar of his jacket into a noose.
We are no more than arm’s length from each other, the shamal blasting us both. He’s got gravity on his side, pressing me down, but I’ve got the better grip. He’s choking the life out of me at the same time as I’m strangling him. Now it just comes down to who can last. Who can live.
While we’re waiting to find out, his mind and memories open and spill into mine.
Snake Eater’s real name is Eric Schaffer. He’s thirty-two. He grew up in a small house in Kansas City.
He increases the pressure. I do the same. I can hear him grunt, feel the collar cut into the skin of his neck. His thumbs slide around, trying for my carotid.
The ceiling of his bedroom was painted blue. He had a dog named Barkley. Some kind of Lab mix. One day the dog ran off and never came back. He cried so hard he thought something would break.
I jerk my head back, keep him from getting his thumbs in. Jam my elbow into his, trying to break his grip. Twist the collar harder. His face is going deep red now.
He took a girl named Christy to prom and had sex for the very first time in a hotel room he and his friends rented together.
I keep applying pressure, pulling as hard as I can with both hands. His hands are greasy with sweat. They slip. I get a little slack and I make the most of it, ratchet my noose even tighter.
He spent the morning after his thirtieth birthday hungover, looking at the number for his parents on his phone, wondering if he should call them back.
He’s fading out, but his grip is still tight. He won’t let go.
He spent the night of his thirtieth birthday in a bar where he beat a guy half to death over an insult he can’t remember now. He never called his parents back.
His throat is burning red and spots are dancing in front of his eyes now.
His face is purple and blue.
It occurs to him that he’s really thirsty. He’d really like a cold drink of water right now.
I see a blood vessel burst in his eye. I pull harder.
It’s the last thing he wants.
His hands only unclench a second after he dies.
It takes me a long moment to disentangle myself from him. Mentally and physically.
I shove his body aside and spend a few minutes panting for air. It feels like sucking down hot mud. None of my limbs are working right.
But it’s worse inside my skull. His whole life is right there. Right next to the knowledge that I ended it. When I’m that close to someone at the end, it all gets badly mixed together. He still sent his mom flowers on Mother’s Day and once dragged a friend from a flaming Humvee in Iraq.
And here comes his death. That all-too-familiar black hole filling my head with darkness thicker than quicksand, threatening to drag me down with him.
Nobody’s ever the villain in his own story. Aside from trying to kill me for money, Schaffer wasn’t such a bad guy. And at these moments, it becomes incredibly hard for me to justify why I’m the one still breathing and the other guy’s a corpse.
All he did was take a job. Not so different from me. Up close and personal, there is no way to lie about it, especially to myself.
I am almost ready to let the blackness suck me down. To give up, and give in, and stop breathing. It seems so easy.
But as always, I find a straw to grasp.
There’s the knowledge, tucked in the middle of all of Schaffer’s memories, of Kelsey, and how he was ready to kill her. How he put the crosshairs of a target on her and pulled the trigger.
In his memory, there is a tiny sliver of disappointment at how she turned at the last moment so he could not see her face. He really wanted to see her face.
There’s the difference, slim as it seems, but it’s enough. I never would have done that. I have done shameful things and hurt people, but I never would have done that. Sloan and Cantrell may not be right about me. I might not have a conscience. But I have limits.
Schaffer didn’t. That’s enough for me to drag myself back from the abyss where I sent him.
A moment later, when I can feel my arms and legs again, I get up. I tear Schaffer’s suit off his corpse and dress in it. I dig through his pockets and find what I need. The storm has passed, and I know where I’m going.
Along with his memories, his clothing, and his keys, I stole one other thing from the last few moments of Eric Schaffer’s life.
I know where to find Eli Preston now.
ORDINARILY, THE STAFF at the Burj Al Arab would never allow someone looking like me into the lobby. It’s supposed to be the only seven-star resort in the world. It sits on its own man-made island, connected to the city by a private causeway. It’s the only hotel in Dubai with a reputation for serious security, which is why Preston chose it.
I’m wearing a suit, but I’m literally trailing grit and dirt. The horrified concierge snaps his fingers, and a young woman rushes out with a broom and dustpan. She follows along behind me, sweeping up the sand, right at my heels with every step.
It should take all my Jedi mind tricks to get to the elevators looking like this, and unfortunately, I am exhausted. But everyone knows about the shamal. And I have a room card.
This makes me an honored guest. As soon as I bring out the hotel key, the concierge is all grace and solicitude, asking if I’m all right, expressing sorrow at my misfortune at being caught outside. He emphasizes that a storm like that is very rare.
I thank him for his concern and walk past security to the elevators.
I swipe Schaffer’s card, and I’m on my way to Preston’s suite.
ONE OF THE remaining bodyguards is at the door. I don’t really remember which one. Or care. I am utterly out of patience.
He sees me coming, wearing the dead man’s suit, and for a second, he sees Schaffer. Then his brain catches up, and he opens his mouth to shout something.
I don’t let him. I send a mind strike right to the Broca’s area of his brain. Instead of what he meant to say, he blurts, “Flanges! Turnips and antifreeze!”
He’s so shocked at what comes out of his own mouth he drops his guard completely. While he struggles to figure out if he’s having a stroke, I hit him hard enough to bounce his skull off the frame of the door. His eyes roll up into his head, and he sags to the floor.
I pause at the door and scan the room, stretching my talent, listening for stray thoughts.
I sense two people inside.
One man is off in a side room, his brain deep in the regular delta-wave rhythms of sleep. That’s got to be the bodyguard. Makes sense. Three men to cover a single person, twenty-four-hour day, eight-hour shifts. One of them has to sleep sometime.
There’s nothing there for me to read. He’s completely unconscious. Nothing short of a gunshot is going to get him up now.
Then there’s the other mind in the suite, very much awake, scurrying like a rat in a maze, running down possibilities, discarding what doesn’t work, streams and streams of data flowing all around it.
Preston.
Schaffer’s key card opens the door. I walk into the main room.
The suite is half the size of a football field. There are floor-to-ceiling windows framing the sky and the Gulf, and the moon. The view is utterly magnificent.
Preston has his back to it, his entire focus riveted on the screen of the laptop on his desk. There are pill bottles and empty cans and coffee cups. He is typing furiously. I can see him racking his brain, trying to dredge up memories of code he wrote two years ago.
It’s not going well.
He barely glances at me. Like the guard at the door, he’s fooled by the suit. He puts a can of Rockstar to his lips, finds it empty, and flings it across the room. It bounces off the wood paneling.
“Get me another one of those,” he snaps. “Is it done? Did you get him?”
“No, Preston,” I say. “He didn’t.”
It takes him a moment to disengage from the virtual world and come back to this one. He looks up, and his eyes shift their focus from the screen. Then he sees me standing there.
“Holy shit,” he says. Not exactly eloquent, but a pretty accurate read on the situation.
He leaps up, knocking over his chair, and fills his lungs to scream for help.
With resources I didn’t know I still had, I cross the room at a fast run and put my fist in his stomach.
He folds in half, unable to breathe. I grab his right hand, twist it back in a two-finger grip, and put him in an armlock. He drops to his knees and I pull his arm above his head. He’s not going anywhere.
“Please,” he gasps. “I’ll pay whatever you want.”
“I told you already,” I remind him. “Negotiations are over.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” he demands. Even cornered, even trapped, he wants to deal. “Looking into your past. I found something. Something I can give you. All you have to do is let me go. Just let me go, and I’ll tell you.”
I’m mildly curious now. “Tell me what?”
“I know the names of your real parents.”
He says it with a little smile of triumph. If I weren’t so sick of him, I’d want to laugh. He thinks he’s dug up a secret that I have to know. It’s what he does, after all. But I made my peace with this issue years ago. There were times, I admit, when I went to bed wondering who they were, and I might have even fallen asleep with tears and snot on my face from crying about how they didn’t love me. But that was a long time ago. I left that baggage in junior high. I’ve had far worse traumas than my mommy and daddy issues to keep me busy since then.
“Eli,” I say. “What makes you think I could possibly give a damn?”
He’s speechless for a moment. He thought he had a way out. When I shut it down without discussion, his mind ignites with desperation.
“Money. Stock options. You could be a millionaire—no, a billionaire,” he says. “You know how much I’m going to be worth. All you have to do is let it happen. You could own a piece of the future.”
I hesitate. Because I’m not an idiot. Sloan’s offering an island. A billion dollars would buy a whole chain of islands. Or maybe even a small country.
But Preston cannot ever quit while he’s ahead. Even if he could shut his mouth, he can’t keep his brain quiet.
“And I swear, nothing will ever happen to Kelsey in the future. I promise.”
I see it then, in his mind. He’s got the location of the private clinic where Sloan has moved Kelsey from the hospital. He has performed some of his usual hacker bullshit to find her, and he’s got people he can call who could be there before morning. He hasn’t carried out any of these plans yet—he’s been too busy trying to save his own ass—but he’s got them ready. Just in case.
“You promise?” I ask.
He nods so hard I think his head will shake off. “She’ll be safe. I swear. She’ll never have to worry about me.”
He says it in the same tone a magician would say “abracadabra” and reveal the girl whole and unharmed despite all the swords he has rammed through the box.
But as I keep saying, this is not a Vegas act. This is real.
And he will never put her in danger again.
I tighten my grip.
“You’re right,” I tell him. “She won’t.”
He sees the look on my face and closes his eyes. He’s braced for a bullet to the brain, or worse. But he still finds the air to beg. “Please don’t kill me.”
“I’m not here to kill you, Preston,” I say.
He opens one eye again. For a moment, hope sparks inside him.
“I’m here to take everything from you,” I say. Then I concentrate. I don’t really remember how I wiped out my drill sergeant’s mind. But I’ve figured out a way so it doesn’t matter. Just like the computer virus I planted in OmniVore’s servers, deleting memory by overwriting it, I’m going to give Preston a few new things to think about.
“What’s the name of your company?”
“What?” He’s baffled. He knows I know the name. But I don’t want the answer. I want him to think of the answer.
There it is, lighting up that corner of his mind. The part that thinks about OmniVore, and all his cool little apps and his software.
As soon as I see it, I send him an explicit memory from a soldier in Iraq who saw his right leg go flying off into the distance, along with the shrapnel from an IED.
Preston screams in shock and horror. He clutches his own leg, as if he can’t believe that it’s still there.
“OmniVore,” I say. “It eats everything. You thought that was clever.”
“What?” he says again. But his pride is wired deeper than that. He goes right back to those memories. Adapting the algorithm. Watching it peel apart data, finding the hidden secrets, the stuff people didn’t even know they were revealing. I see strings of code in his mind, lined up in neat and orderly rows.
I send him another memory. This is what it feels like when your foster father stops using the belt and starts hitting you with a bottle.
He ducks like he’s feeling the blows himself, curling inward from both the betrayal and the hurt.
“OmniVore,” I say again.
He thinks of his company, his computers, his programs.
This is what it feels like when a four-inch piece of jagged metal from a mortar blast buries itself in your abdomen.
He hisses in pain and wets his pants.
“OmniVore.”
This is what it feels like when someone holds your head down in four inches of water and your lungs fill and you pray to God he’ll let go, but he doesn’t let go.
Preston’s eyes go wide and he goes deathly pale and he gasps for breath.
“OmniVore.”
This is what it feels like to have someone choke you to death with the lapels of your own jacket.
He begins crying.
I release him and he collapses onto the deep-pile carpet. He’s got no fight left in him.
I decide to test my work.
“OmniVore,” I say.
Preston’s mind explodes with pain. He yells out, and he shakes like he’s in the grip of an epileptic seizure.
It won’t last forever. But he’s going to have a hell of a time ever touching a computer again without PTSD.
Then, just out of curiosity, I probe around, looking for the answer to the one question that’s still nagging me. It’s not in his memories of Sloan, which is why I had such a hard time finding it before.
And there it is. It seems so obvious in hindsight. Once I dig it out, everything else falls into place.
Now I know what started this whole mess.
I’m almost finished here. But I’ve got one last thing to tell him before I go.
I kneel down next to him and say a single word, loud enough to be heard over his crying:
> “Kelsey.”
And at the same time, I let him know what it feels like to have a 9mm slug of copper-jacketed lead tear through your chest, your lung, and your shoulder.
Just like she felt.
He begins screaming, and he doesn’t stop. I’m glad the walls are thick.
“Don’t even think about her. Ever again,” I tell him.
That’s where I leave him.
[25]
We are back where we started, in the office in Sioux Falls. Sloan sits behind the desk this time. I’m in the chair facing him.
I flew out of Dubai on Schaffer’s passport. Nobody looked at it too closely, and I dumped it in a trash can at LAX as soon as I got back. His memories were harder to lose. I spent the past week in a cabin at Big Sur, letting my body heal and sweating out a dead man’s nightmares. Now my bruises have almost faded, even if my tie still irritates the places on my neck where he left handprints.
It’s just me and Sloan in the room. His bodyguards are nowhere I can sense them. Gaines picked me up at the airport himself, and he’s waiting on the other side of the door.
Sloan has the good sense to look embarrassed, even if he’s not particularly feeling it.
“I wanted to tell you, in person, that I had no idea any of this would happen,” he says.
“Do you think we’d be having this conversation if I didn’t already know that?”
I can’t keep the scorn out of my voice. He might be the world’s smartest man, for all I know. But he can’t read minds.
He looks down at the desk, upset at being scolded. Here’s how I know he’s scared: he’s practically transparent, compared to our first meeting. There’s no ice wall, no high barrier of equations and lofty thoughts. He’s focused on me. And what I might do.
“I just want you to know I am sorry,” he said.
“I know,” I tell him. I open the bag by my feet and take out Preston’s hard drive, then place it on the desk. This is more ceremonial than anything else. OmniVore is already going down in flames. There’s only been a short press release, saying the company’s IPO has been postponed indefinitely. Preston hasn’t been seen in public since last week in Dubai. Bloomberg News ran a piece saying he’s in a high-dollar psychiatric care center, where the doctors have him on a steady diet of tranquilizers. Top talent is already running for the exits. Within three months—six at the most—OmniVore will be a memory.
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