Chapter 19
A nondescript van sped up Harkur Street and turned north on Sanatorium Drive, the street that led to the gates of Detroit Mercy. “Nondescript” isn’t entirely accurate. It was actually fairly easy to descript. It was a garden-variety box-on-wheels with all the usual windows, mirrors, seats, and sliding doors. It was beige and accented with fake wood panelling. It was a perfectly average van. It was the Ian Brown of personal transportation.
This particular van smelled faintly of gym shoes. Tonto wrinkled her perfect nose and thought briefly that it might have been a mistake to make off with the car thieves’ shoes. She’d taken all of their clothes and weapons — anything that might come in handy. The extra clothes would be especially useful. A gang of escaped mental patients wearing terry-cloth robes invites comment — particularly when one of the patients is Zeus-sized.
Tonto dropped the van into second gear as she drew closer to the gates.
The downtown core was largely free of pedestrians and traffic. Tonto had counted on that. She’d picked today — Abe Day, the annual holiday celebrating Abe’s leadership — as the day of the escape for that very reason. The usual detritus of Detroit’s downtown core had migrated to various stadia, exhibition grounds, and public squares for an assortment of Abe Day festivities. With the downtown core empty there’d be little chance of police interference, little chance of being caught in traffic, and little chance of officious onlookers who might otherwise take an inconvenient interest in the escape of a gang of mental patients. And once they’d made it twelve blocks northward, where Sanatorium Drive merged with the parade route, they could ditch the van and slip into the crowds. No one would spot them. Finding Ian and his companions in the crowd would be like looking for a handful of needles in a haystack — or, to be slightly more accurate, it’d be like looking for mental patients in a crowd of parade-watchers, which is harder.
If only the IPT were working, Tonto reflected. She had guided Rhinnick as he planned the Great Escape, but neither of them could have predicted that the strike would carry on for as long as it had. It was a cosmically inconvenient feat of timing. The one time Tonto needed to leave Central Detroit as quickly as possible was the one time that she couldn’t. And leaving Ian in the hospice wasn’t an option, not anymore — not with undetectable guard-attacking intruders taking an interest in Ian’s files. It wasn’t safe.
It was almost as though there was someone trying to flush Ian out, trying to coax him out of the hospice and into the streets where he’d be vulnerable. And whoever it was wanted to keep him from teleporting to safety. If Tonto had been a conspiracy buff, she might have thought that some invisible hand had orchestrated the strike as well as the recent attack on the hospice. She might have believed that Ian was being corralled into a trap.
It was odd, Tonto reflected, how close she felt to Ian, how there was nothing more important to her than his safety. That didn’t make sense. She hardly knew him, yet she knew that she’d risk everything for him — even a mindwipe, the so-called “obliteration of self,” which it now seemed Ian had undergone in the past. She felt as though she was meant to protect him — not simply because she’d sworn an oath as Ian’s DDH guide, but because the need to protect him had been stitched into the tapestry of her being. Rhinnick would probably say the Author had written it into her character sketch.
It was as though the river had manifested Tonto with a built-in need to watch over Ian. Maybe it had, Tonto reflected. According to Peericks, Ian had been mindwiped by being re-immersed in the river, by being submerged in the neural flows until the contents of his mind had been absorbed into the currents. Maybe something in the river — some part of the neural flows — had been affected by the re-absorption of Ian’s mind. Maybe something in the neural flows had been imprinted with . . . imprinted with what? Ian’s will to live? Could that even happen? And if it could, could that imprint somehow make its way into Tonto’s pre-manifested mind, working itself into her psyche as she formed in the river’s depths? Why else would she feel so devoted to a man she hardly knew?
Tonto shook herself back to the present. It didn’t matter why she felt the need to watch over Ian. All that mattered was Ian’s safety. There wasn’t time to wonder why.
She eased the van to a stop two hundred metres south of the main gates. The coast was clear. No other cars, no one in sight. She applied the emergency brake and shut off the engine.
Tonto glanced back at the weapons that she’d taken from the thieves. She hadn’t planned on bringing weapons — she’d been inclined to trust in speed, distraction, and good timing to assure Ian’s escape. But now that the van held an array of outdated, low-end armaments, Tonto’s thoughts lingered on them. On the top of the pile was a Harrington T-50 — a semi-automatic, slug-throwing pistol. That might come in handy, Tonto reflected. It could empty a full clip in 4.5 seconds and came equipped with a Barrett 305 clip-handler for quick reloading. Too bad about the recoil, Tonto mused — that had always posed a problem in Harrington’s delayed-blowback models. At least they’d minimized the issue in newer models.
How in Abe’s name did she know that? And how did she know that she could field-strip and reassemble the Harrington T-50 in thirty seconds? How did she even know what field-strip meant? She’d never used a gun before, never held one; she’d never been interested in any sort of weapons. But now that she had a slightly archaic arsenal in the van, she knew precisely how much more efficient a pulse cannon, a boson whip, or percussion grenades would be for a job like this one.
Maybe she’d read it all in a book.
She wondered how she knew a lot of things, lately — like the fastest way to disable an opponent wearing full combat dress, or the fact that, at this altitude, Detroit’s top professional sprinters could run flat out for three minutes before their lungs would start to burn. And she knew that she, Tonto, could outrun them. But how did she know that? She just knew. The knowledge seemed to be built-in. Probably something she’d picked up in the neural flows — woven into her mental tapestry, spliced into her core being, forming part of her born identity. Like instinct. It was a lot like Tonto’s absolute, unswerving certainty that the most important thing in all of Detroit was Ian’s safety.
Back on task, thought Tonto. She took a moment to survey her immediate surroundings. It was odd, she reflected, that the hospice gate wasn’t in a more secure location. For one thing, there were too many trees, bushes, and shrubs that might provide cover for anyone up to no good. Take the tree under which she’d parked — it obscured the van from the view of the security cameras lining the hospice walls, and would also break the line of sight of any unseen observers stationed on the surrounding buildings. A stroke of luck for Tonto, but bad planning by whoever had been in charge of hospice security. And look at those sewer grates, she thought, manhole covers, postal boxes — any one of which might conceal a hidden enemy. She’d be glad to put some distance between this place and Ian.
Something shimmered in Tonto’s rear-view mirror. She turned her head, craning her neck to see what it was.
Just a trick of the light, she thought, squinting through the windows and redirecting the mirrors. Heat haze rising from the streets, sunlight shimmering off the pavement. She checked her watch. Rhinnick and Ian should be here any moment. She should be ready — ready to hightail it out of here the moment they reached the van. She sat back in the driver’s seat and fastened her seatbelt, flicking the switch to unlock the van’s rear doors.
She glanced sideways, checking her mirrors for any further sign of —
There was a sudden sound of buckling metal as the driver’s side door was torn from the van. A tall, grey-haired man, fully outfitted in black body armour and festooned with high-tech weapons, stood outside, effortlessly tossing the crumpled door twenty feet across the road.
Socrates.
Tonto knew that it was Socrates. She’d never seen him before — until this precise moment she
hadn’t even believed in him. Socrates couldn’t be real. He was the thing that went bump in the night; he was the darkness under the bed.
He could destroy his victim’s minds, thought Tonto. Is that what happened to Ian? Had Socrates come back to finish the job?
Socrates is after Ian. He’s going to kill him.
It has been said that there are fourteen kinds of terror. Of these, only two can be experienced by people who, like Tonto, could otherwise be called fearless. The first is the universal fear of passing wind in public.40 The second, the worst of all terrors, is the fear that one experiences for others. It is the fear that no matter what you do, someone you love is about to come to harm. It is a mind-twisting, soul-searing combination of selfishness and self-sacrifice — the selfish fear that you’re about to be forever deprived of a loved one’s presence, and the selfless wish that you could take that loved one’s place and face the peril.
This is the terror that washed over Tonto now. It was . . . it was familiar, although Tonto couldn’t remember having experienced it before. Ian is going to die, she thought, and the thought reverberated through her like the echo of a terror she’d felt before. Ian is going to die. She gave no thought to her own peril. It didn’t matter that right now, with Socrates looming an arm’s length from her, she faced her own Obliteration of Self. All that mattered was Ian. Socrates is going to kill Ian.
Tonto realized that she’d been staring at Socrates, immobilized by fear. Her face was wet. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t run. She stared up into Socrates’ face through tear-rimmed eyes.
The assassin was standing beside the van, smiling amiably. He hadn’t moved since tossing aside the van’s door. He simply stood there, allowing terror to do its work, observing the glimmer of recognition in Tonto’s eyes. He was revelling in the fact that she knew the name of the man she faced, that she knew what he could do.
He was enjoying this.
“Run,” growled Socrates.
Tonto blinked rapidly and sputtered something inaudible.
“Speak up, girl,” said Socrates.
“I . . . I . . . I can’t,” repeated Tonto.
“Give it a go,” said Socrates, grinning. It’d be a shame to end this quickly, he reflected. From what Isaac had reported, a confrontation with this girl was apt to be fun. Equals, he had said. Pah. Equals. She hadn’t even been trained. She had no equipment. Still, from everything Isaac had said, this would be interesting. Better to savour the experience — heighten the tension, let the fear mature and ferment — let her escape for a few minutes while he dealt with Rhinnick and Ian.
“Come on. I’ll give you a head start,” he added, congenially. “Let me help you with that seat belt.”
“That — that’s not what I meant,” said Tonto, struggling to swallow. “I meant . . . I meant . . .”
“Spit it out,” said Socrates, intrigued.
“I meant . . . I meant I can’t run.” A frightened tear fled down Tonto’s face and hid behind her collar. “I have to stop you.”
Socrates cocked his head to one side, puzzled. He could see that she was afraid. She was terrified. He could taste her terror. But it was tinged with something else — something . . . unusual. It was . . . defiance? This was new. When Socrates told people to run, they ran. They took to the notion wholeheartedly, often setting land-speed records in the process. When given a choice between a few extra moments with Socrates and an attempt at a high-speed marathon, running had, up until now, been the universal favourite.
And thus it was a furrowed brow that Tonto struck with the tire iron that she had surreptitiously grasped during the shortest Socratic dialogue in history.
The blow landed with enough fear-driven force to shatter a Kevlar helmet, not to mention any skull that might be thick enough to stay put while tire irons are flinging about at brow level.
It really shouldn’t have gone “poi-oi-oing.”
A “thump,” a “crack,” or even a “whack” would have been appropriate, but the vaguely comedic sound of a wooden ruler plucked on a desktop was most certainly out of place. It wasn’t suitable. It didn’t fit the drama of the occasion.
Nevertheless, it went “poi-oi-oing.”
The poi-oi-oing reverberated along the length of the tire iron while Tonto and Socrates exchanged embarrassed looks. There was something disconcerting about the apparent failure of prevailing laws of physics and biology. The good news was that they’d managed to solve the one about irresistible forces and immovable objects. The bad news was that the answer was a cartoonish sound effect.
Socrates — centuries older than his opponent and therefore better able to take a philosophical view of sudden, unexplained phenomena — recovered before Tonto. He thrust out a hand and grabbed her arm.
Contact.
There was a burst of retina-burning, purple-indigo light and an eardrum-bursting “whoomph,” as though all sound and every molecule of atmospheric gas had been sucked to the precise point where Socrates’ hand had touched Tonto’s arm.
Silence happened.
An eternity later the air was rent by an ear-splitting “ka-boom.”
Street cleaners would be clearing bits of van off the scenery for weeks.
* * *
40In Tonto’s case this was an irrational fear. This cannot happen to pretty girls.
Chapter 20
“What the hell was that?” cried Ian, lying prone in the hospice garden and shielding his head with both hands. He and Zeus had been haring toward the hospice gate, fire alarms clanging behind them, when the skies had filled with blinding, purplish light and the whole world had gone “whoomph.” He and Zeus had been launched backward into a nicely manicured patch of rare azaleas.
“Dunno,” said Zeus, shaking his head and scrabbling to his feet while offering Ian a huge hand. “The Napoleons, maybe?” he added, panting. “They said they’d set off a distraction.”
“It can’t be,” said Ian, wiping petals from his forehead. “The — the explosion, or whatever it was, came from past the gate. The Napoleons should still be in the — HEY!”
He shouted as loudly as he could and tried to push Zeus out of the way. It was like shoving a brick wall. Zeus looked down at Ian with a bemused expression.
“What are you doing?” he asked, interested.
There was a long, low whistling sound that slowly rose in pitch until an engine block thudded into the ground beside Zeus, missing him by inches. It was followed by part of a mangled bumper bearing a sticker that said Honk if you love Abe. Smoke trailed off the wreckage. The twisted metal made a pinging, popping, crackling sound as it cooled.
A hubcap rolled past. This always happens.
Ian and Zeus looked at the wreckage. They looked at the sky. They looked at each other. They looked at the wreckage again.
A sudden rustling in the bushes up ahead preceded a cry of “Come zees way!” as two Napoleons — Three and Four — stood gesticulating wildly from behind a length of hedges off to the side of the main gate. One of the Napoleons was waving a small, shiny object. The gate was ajar and — as far as Ian could see — unguarded.
Ian and Zeus charged for the hedges, trying their best to keep low — both to avoid being seen by the Goons, health-care workers, and hospice patients in the garden, and to avoid any additional low-flying car parts.
“Where is everyone?” said Ian, panting as he and Zeus slid into the hedges. The group in the hedge was, Ian perceived, a few Napoleons short of a full hand.
“Ze guards got zem!” announced Napoleon Number Four. She was presently doing her best to gather up a seltzer bottle, a pair of inflated water-wings, a brick of Plasticine, a length of hose, and a book of matches — almost certainly components of what Rhinnick had referred to as “The Napoleonic Distraction.” Ian had thought it best not to ask for details.
“Where are the guards?” as
ked Zeus, crouching awkwardly and doing his best to hide an XXL body behind a medium-sized hedge.
A low groan issued from a flowerbed, as if in answer to Zeus’s question.
“Zey got in ze way,” said Napoleon Number Three, his eyes darting left and right. He absent-mindedly wiped a knife on the hem of his robe. It left a reddish-brown streak.
“But how did you — oh!” Zeus gasped, cottoning on. “You said that no one would be hurt! You said that you wouldn’t have —”
This speech was interrupted by Ian, who clasped his hand across Zeus’s mouth while placing an index finger in front of his own lips and making a noise like air escaping from a tire. Zeus appeared to recognize this signal as the universal code for “Shut up, Zeus, we’re hiding in these hedges and hoping that no one finds us.”
“Eet was easier zees way,” whispered Napoleon Number Three. “Zey were distracted by ze purple sky and ze great explosion. I took care of zem. Do not worry. Zey will recover.”
“Eventually,” said Napoleon Number Four, shuddering visibly. She looked more than a little green-about-the-gills, and had the air of a novice drinker midway through the first day of a three-day hangover. “You deed not ’ave to be so . . . so . . . so torough about it,” she added, grimacing. “Eet was too much.”
“So, that explosion,” Zeus said, “that wasn’t you?”
“No! Eet came from over ze wall — I don’t know what eet was. Eet ’appened so quickly, while we were —”
“Never mind that now,” said Ian, grimly. “We have to get to Tonto’s van. She’ll be waiting for us by now. Rhinnick should be there any minute. We’ve got to move quickly.”
Two minutes later they were beyond the gates, down Sanatorium Drive, and standing amidst the wreckage of what had been Tonto’s van. Ian was frantically fussing over an unconscious Tonto, who seemed perfectly intact apart from the fact that she was lying in a heap of twisted metal and, unless Ian was much mistaken, melted pavement. She also happened to be naked. It seemed that her clothing had suffered the usual consequences of being found at the centre of a fireball. A few smoking bits of scorched material clung to a few bits of Tonto, miraculously preserving the PG rating.
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