The Gender Game

by Forrest, Bella

  "I still don't understand how we wouldn't be instantly blamed though," I said. "Especially if we were absent from the dinner and—"

  "First," Lee said, "we won't be absent from the dinner—we'll need to discuss the specifics of this nearer the time. Second, I also won't stay away from Patrus for long in the aftermath. Once we've returned the egg to Queen Rina's palace, I'll come back discreetly, and reintegrate myself into the scene. As for your absence…" He grimaced. "Trust me when I say it's not difficult for husbands to hide their wives in Patrus. Most wives hardly go out anyway. There was a murder case last summer where it took five years for the man to be convicted, simply because nobody noticed his wife's absence."

  My jaw dropped.

  "It can be that bad," he assured me. "Especially if the woman is from Matrus. She typically has no family over here. Another option could be to say that you died in the blast. That might be a better way to play things… Then as for the issue of who will take the blame if not us…" He looked me in the eye. "Who do you think could be used as a scapegoat?"

  Used. I didn't like that word. Still, I racked my brain. "Um… Well, it would need to be someone with regular access to the building. Someone who knew it well, and… if the bombing was to make any sense, it would have to be done by somebody who had a reason to hold a grudge against Patrus. Someone who was discontented with their life here." My voice trailed off as Lee nodded. "Who are you thinking?" I asked him.

  Slipping out the red folder, he spilled the wardens' profiles out on the table before his forefinger settled on a single one.

  Glaring up at me was the rugged face of Viggo Croft.

  13

  "Viggo?" I clarified as I stared down at his picture.

  "Yes," Lee said. "He fits the bill excellently for a potential anarchist. Let me explain to you a bit more about his background and it should be clear why… I told you that he got into trouble with the law for obstruction of justice."

  I nodded. Just like I did.

  "Well, the circumstances surrounding that are rather interesting. Viggo used to be married—to none other than a Matrian woman. She was an emissary at the time they met. She tried to move over here but, you guessed it, found the adjustment to Patrus' culture extremely difficult. As the official story goes, her and Viggo's relationship had been tense for months. One night they got into an argument, after which she stormed out, alone. Although Viggo went out after her, she managed to shake him off and lose him. She wandered the whole night as an act of protest and, as the early morning hours drew in, she came upon a couple of drunks who had less than noble intentions.

  "Fortunately for her—or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it—she had been trained in self-defense by Viggo. She stopped their assault and escaped, but she ended up killing one of the men in the process. Given that there were no neutral witnesses—only she, the victim and his accomplice were present at the scene—she had no way to prove that she had been acting in self-defense. Viggo found her in the morning, stumbling back toward their home. After she told him what had happened, he tried to cover up her crime… obviously knowing what would ensue for her. He made an attempt to ship her back to Matrus, but failed. She was taken before the judge, and—given that she was already guilty of having left her husband and roaming the streets unsupervised at night—there was little sympathy for her in the trial. Long story short, she ended up being sentenced to hanging."

  Hung for acting in self-defense. The sheer injustice caused the blood to drain from my face.

  "Viggo was to serve four years in jail for his act of dishonesty. But, given his skill and the value he added to the city's security force, jail time was deemed a waste for him. He was made a special offer: resume his position as a palace warden and serve without pay for four years… He's in his second year now. His wife's death has obviously scarred him. He moved away from the city and set up in a cabin in the mountains a few weeks after the hanging. He's never been the most approachable of guys, but since he lost her, he's notorious for being tightly strung—as you may have noticed.”

  Lee rose to his feet and paced in front of the window.

  "So, in sum, we have a man with a clear grudge against the state, who has lost his wife, and is now leading a life that's been forced upon him… Men have snapped beneath lesser burdens." He caught my eye. "But just as important as all of this," he went on, "is that he was made chief coordinator. He has access to the lab… It would honestly be hard to think of a more suitable person to lay the blame on."

  My stomach tensed. An innocent person. We would be framing an innocent man, who had obviously already been through hell and back. This didn't sit right with me. At all.

  "There must be some other way we can pull this off," I breathed. "I can't believe that laying the blame on someone else is the only way. What if it we didn't set this up as a terrorist attack but instead… I don't know, some other kind of explosion in the building? It's a laboratory, Lee. Surely there are other exploitable options?" Options that don't involve a beating heart.

  Lee shook his head. "I've thought this through, Violet. I've thought this through for days. I understand your hesitation to frame an innocent person—of course I understand. I feel as uneasy as you about it. But this is the only way we can convincingly pull it off without laying the blame squarely on Matrus. Remember, Patrus stole the egg from Matrus in the first place. We are only retrieving what is ours."

  ‘What is ours’. You mean what is the queen's and her army of scientists’. An object whose contents I still had no damn idea about.

  I pursed my lips, my stomach continuing to churn.

  "So," Lee continued, his voice becoming more subdued. "The next question is, how exactly would we go about setting the man up as an anarchist? How would we make it convincing? How do we make sure that he's at the right place at the right time?"

  I didn't feel like offering any more suggestions. Lee had apparently already thought all this through, anyway.

  "The first issue," he said, "is that we need to be able to track his movements, and understand his day. We need to be aware of when he's doing his rounds by the Crescent, when he's at home, and when he's at the gym or in the cage."

  "Cage?" I interrupted.

  "He's a professional cage fighter. That's what he does for money these days. Takes as many fights as he can while off work."

  "Oh. I see." I recalled the conversation Simon and Lee's other colleagues had regarding the sport's popularity here in Patrus. "How would we track him?"

  "Come with me," Lee said, gesturing to the door. I rose and followed him to his bedroom where he sat down at his desk in front of a computer monitor before pulling open a drawer and lifting out a ball of metal foil. Within it was a semi-transparent gel-filled capsule that I almost didn't notice because of its minuscule size. In the center of it was a black dot. I leaned closer. Some kind of… square object? My eyes weren't sharp enough. I would need a microscope to be able to describe it better.

  "What is it?" I asked.

  "An ingestible tracking device."

  My eyes shot up to meet Lee's.

  "Are you serious?"

  "Yup," Lee said. "Swallow it down with some water, and it will embed itself in the gut—staying there for up to three weeks."

  Ugh. "Where did you get this thing?"

  "It was developed in Matrus, actually," he said. "I picked it up from Alastair during my last visit to the queen's palace. It's so tiny, you wouldn't even notice it gliding down your throat when swallowed with a gulp of liquid. He'll never know it's inside him, and it'll pass through naturally on its expiry."

  "H-How would you actually make him swallow this?"

  Lee refolded the foil around the capsule and placed it in my hand. "The question is, how will you?"

  14

  "Slipping Viggo this tracker will be your first task," Lee explained. "And it needs to be done as soon as possible. He has a fight tomorrow night on the outskirts of town. I'll drop you off there, and you'll need to fig
ure out how to do it."

  Lee opened up his cupboard and pulled out a stiff shirt and an even stiffer gray suit. The shirt and jacket were padded around the shoulders. A man's outfit.

  My lips parted.

  "Try this on," he said.

  As I pulled the costume on over my clothes, it was surprisingly lightweight and comfortable. I looked in the mirror. My chest, which didn't bulge much anyway, could easily pass as a man's. The shirt was amply bulky.

  "This is a temporary measure," Lee said, eyeing me over. "I have a body suit for you, too." He rummaged in his closet and pulled out an actual skin-colored male body suit, complete with bulges in all the right places. "But I figured that'd really be throwing you in at the deep end. This gray suit will be enough for tomorrow."

  He replaced the body suit in the cupboard, and then drew out a wig of curly black locks and strips of facial hair.

  “This is insane!” I said.

  Lee looked half amused as he applied my wig and then the facial hair with a thin, transparent adhesive. By the time he was done, I was a black-haired man with a mustache and a generous beard. The facial hair helped to cover the softness of my jaw. I would have laughed in disbelief at how realistic it looked had I not been so tense.

  "However you figure out the logistics, this task shouldn't be too difficult," Lee said. "Remember, it'll be nighttime. I'll give you this, too." He brandished a cap and planted it on top of my head. "Oh, and lenses, to be doubly sure…" He left for the bathroom and returned with a rectangular silver packet, as well as a narrow white and blue box. He split the packet open and told me to tilt my head back while he applied the lenses. I hadn't expected the application to be so uncomfortable, but he managed it. When I looked back in the mirror I had dull brown eyes. My eyeballs had gone reddish with irritation, my tear ducts working overtime.

  "Your eyes will get used to them," Lee assured me.

  "And shoes," I murmured. "I guess I can wear the ones I arrived here with. They're unisex. But then there's the matter of my voice. What if I need to speak?"

  "You should try to avoid speaking at all costs," Lee said. "But in case you can't…" He held out the small box so that I could see the front of it. Bold, jagged black letters stamped across the packaging announced the product as "Deepvox." He opened the box to reveal it was stuffed with tablets.

  "You're kidding me."

  "Nope." Lee laughed. "This is actually a thing here. Swallow one of these and it'll deepen your voice for up to twelve hours. Designed for men who aren't happy with their natural tone."

  "Go deeper. Last longer," was the brand's slogan.

  "What are the side effects?" I asked, dubious. I squinted at the tiny, almost illegible print on the side of the box.

  "Your throat might get sore," Lee said. "But that's nothing that can't be solved with some warm honey and ginger tea. You should get used to it after a while, anyway."

  How many times was I going to have to swallow these things? How many excursions would I have to make before leaving Patrus?

  For the sake of my sanity, I figured that it was best to only look one step in front of me at a time.

  "I should test the product now to see how well it works on me," I said. "And how quickly it will work."

  We headed to the kitchen where I helped myself to a glass of water.

  I swallowed one of the small round pills gingerly and waited with bated breath. Nothing happened at first, other than my heart pounding. Then I began to feel a constricting, tingling feeling at the back of my mouth. It wasn't strong enough to hurt, just enough to be unpleasant.

  "Say something," Lee said.

  "Hello." A noticeably deeper voice blurted from my lips. Not quite deep enough to pass me off as a man, though. I consulted the product's description; it said it could take up to an hour for the pill's effect to fully come into play.

  "I suggest you take three tomorrow evening to be safe," Lee said. "Otherwise, I guess you're ready."

  * * *

  Lee had to go out early the next morning, which left me alone in the house with Samuel. As I washed up after breakfast, I already knew the wait for this evening's excursion was going to be tedious. Tedious and nerve-wracking.

  I ended up gathering a pile of books from the library and sitting out in the garden; the mild temperature and mountain breeze helped to calm me. I took a seat in a deck chair and tried to forget about the time for as long as I could, until I could no longer ignore Samuel's whining. I finally acquiesced to his requests to play ball and remained busy with him until lunchtime. I brought food outside for both of us so we could sit in the sun and eat, and then spent the rest of the afternoon indoors. I had roamed every room in the house by now, but I still had not set foot in the basement. On heading down there, however, I discovered the door was locked.

  I huffed and returned upstairs.

  I had deliberately eaten until I felt stuffed again, hoping to make myself feel drowsy so I might be able to get some solid sleep before Lee's return. I had been awake most of the night before, tossing and turning and worrying. The food was beginning to take its toll and I slipped into my bed and managed to pass the rest of my alone time in slumber.

  I woke up to the sound of the front door unlatching, and Samuel's barks as he scurried to the door.

  Yawning, I staggered out of bed, splashed my face with cold water, and headed downstairs.

  A black canvas bag was waiting by the doorway, filled with some kind of heavy, rectangular weight. The door was open, and I caught sight of Lee crossing the drive and returning with an identical second bag.

  He quickly closed the door and turned to me, rather out of breath.

  He planted down the second bag next to the first and reached into his pocket. He rummaged and pulled out a square piece of card: a ticket to the event at Brunswick Arena. There were to be four fights that evening; Viggo and his opponent, "Seamus Vanguard", were up first.

  "Keep this ticket somewhere safe," Lee told me. "And don't forget to bring it with you."

  I stowed it in my pocket, my focus returning to the bags. "What are they?" I asked.

  "Explosives," he replied over his shoulder as he descended to the basement. Then he changed the subject. "By the way, we should leave in less than an hour."

  I sensed his unease. As a Matrian male, Lee wasn't a naturally aggressive person. Less aggressive than me, I was sure. I doubted any of this came instinctively to him.

  "Okay, I'll start getting ready." I dragged my feet up the stairs to Lee's room. Opening the cupboard, I pulled out all the parts of my costume and quickly slipped out of my clothes and pulled on the shirt and suit. I decided to leave the whole facial hair thing to Lee, but did make an attempt to apply my wig.

  Lee arrived a few minutes later, carrying the lenses and the pills. Once he finished my cosmetic appearance—leaving my eyes feeling sore and watery again—I took the pills. After ten minutes, my voice had deepened enough to be passable as a man’s, even if a slightly effeminate one. But by the time we arrived at the Arena, it should have deepened further.

  I stuffed my ticket into the jacket pocket while Lee equipped me with a pager and, of course, the all-important ball of foil. I was also sure to remove my wedding ring.

  As we were about to step out of the house, Lee's phone rang.

  "Hello?" Lee answered. His expression went serious. "Yes. Yes. It's going according to plan. Yes."

  After a few more yeses, Lee handed the phone to me. "It's Alastair," he whispered.

  Alastair? I took the phone and pressed it to my ear. “Mr. Jenks?"

  "Ms. Bates?" he replied. It was strange to hear his voice again. He felt like another universe away.

  "Uh, yeah. It's me. I just took some Deepvox pills."

  "I see. How's everything going?"

  "Okay, I think." I replied, frowning.

  "How are you finding Patrus?" he asked.

  How does he expect me to answer that? "Uh, not exactly pleasant.” Not that Matrus' detention centers w
ere pleasant, either. But at least there my sense of worth wasn't constantly being affronted, and I wasn't under so much stress.

  "Okay, well, I won't keep you," he said. "I'll check in with both of you again soon."

  With that, he hung up. My eyes turned to Lee in confusion. "What was that about?" I asked.

  "Wanted to verify for himself we're both still on the job," Lee replied. "Make sure I hadn't lost you." He opened the front door and we strode out into the night. "Anyway, I think you should start focusing now," Lee said as we donned our helmets and climbed onto his motorcycle. "Visualize what you need to accomplish tonight in your head."

  Lee drove me through the tail end of rush-hour traffic to the outskirts of town—suburbs to the south that were noticeably rougher than the city or any other areas I'd passed so far. The streets were not as well cleaned, the buildings shabbier, and the men roaming around looked generally more unkempt. I was still unable to spot a single woman amidst them.

  Lee parked the motorcycle in a bay on the sidewalk opposite a tall, round building, the first two floors of which were occupied by a noisy, smoky eatery. He led me across the road and around the side of the building where we stopped outside a set of open, peeling, red double doors. I poked my head through to find a stairwell leading downward.

  "The arena is through there," Lee whispered. He backed up against the wall of the building and glanced nervously to the left and right. "As you can see from the ticket, we're a bit early. Not a problem, though. Just go through those doors and show your ticket."

  "What time will you come to pick me up?" I asked.

  "Viggo's up first and his fights rarely go past one round. Let's say… giving time for any possible delays… eleven."

  "That late?"

  "Well, you shouldn't just leave straight after Viggo's fight. It's considered discourteous and you might draw unwanted attention to yourself."