by JA Huss
Steve is in the second-floor hallway when I walk towards the back of the house. “Don’t,” he says.
“Shut up,” I say absently. Like I have power over this new me. It pisses me off because he does this every single time and he knows. He knows I can’t help it. “And go the fuck away.”
The back bedroom is mostly empty. Just a guest bed and one long modern dresser. But it’s got an expansive square terrace that faces the mountain. When I pull the French doors open, the wind and snow rushes in, bathing my body in sweet coolness.
It feels so fucking good. I place my hands on the snow-covered iron railing, pressing down until I touch cold metal. It doesn’t stay cold for long and that’s the part that drives me. The relief I feel. How will I be able to deal with my needs in the summer?
It’s a question that bothers me. But I don’t dwell on it much. I really don’t think I’ll be alive next summer. I think whatever this is, it’s killing me.
I can pretend it’s made me immortal all I want, but it’s just the delusions talking in my head. To keep me going. Keep me cutting.
I swing my leg up onto the railing, pulling my body up by grabbing onto a narrow architectural concrete shelf. When I’m standing on that, I grab an ornamental detail made out of metal that reminds me of a trellis and acts like a ladder. Less than a minute later I’m on the flat roof of my house, captivated by the city view.
Or what I can see of it through the blowing snow that beats against my back and instantly melts.
The whispers start immediately. Like she’s been waiting for me. My city.
I need you. Do as I ask. Be me. Help me. I need you. Do as I ask. Be me. Help me. I need you.
Over and over and over.
“I’m here,” I grumble to the city’s whispers. I walk to the edge of the roof and stand there, my arms outstretched. I don’t care if people can see me. Let them see me.
Who owns a city? she asks me.
“The people,” I say.
No, she whispers back.
“The politicians.”
No. No. No.
“The predators,” I growl, lifting the knife to the fleshy part of my upper left shoulder. I make the cuts deep and with practiced ease as the blood pours out. It runs down my arm, burning it. Making the skin blister. But all I feel is relief.
“Predators like me,” I finish.
Yes, she calls out. Yes, yes, yes.
I start laughing. Loudly. I am insane. I’m up here on my roof, naked. Cutting myself. Mutilating myself like an ancient sacrifice.
And I love it.
“I fucking love it!” I yell.
“Case?” My city is talking. And shaking me. “Case!” she yells.
But it’s not my city. It’s my Lulu.
The cold hits me like a fucking punch to the chest. I draw in a gasp of air and it goes down frigid. I open my eyes and see Lulu standing over me, staring back, her eyes wide with shock, and worry, and panic.
“Oh, my God,” she says, covering her mouth with her hand. “What are you doing out here? Holy shit. You’re freezing.”
I’m fine. I try to growl it out, but I can’t. I normally sleep after the cuts. I drift away to another world. One that’s dominated by whispers so soft, they caress me, keep me safe.
The next thing I know there’s a flurry of snow and a roar from above. Lulu is screaming something. Tugging on my arms, sliding me through the puddle of tepid water that surrounds my body where snow once was.
I’m wrapped up in a drenched coat that hurts as it rubs against my skin.
“Case.”
I don’t know how much time passes, but it can’t be much. The roar is still there. I’m still outside. The puddle of water is still tepid, but cooling fast. Light leaks past my closed eyelids and I know it’s probably close to dawn.
“Case, goddammit.”
“Thomas?” This time the word comes out of my mouth instead of getting stuck in my head.
“Grab him,” Lincoln says.
They lift me, carry me. Thomas is telling Lulu to get back inside the house. He’ll call her later.
I laugh.
She’s a raging bitch back to Thomas and when I’m finally able to open my eyes, I’m not surprised to see her looking down at me from the interior of the helicopter.
“He’s awake!” Lulu yells.
Lincoln’s face is down in mine, shining a light into my eyes. I reach up, grab the little flashlight, and toss it across the cabin.
“Don’t be a dick,” Thomas says. “He’s just checking you out.”
“I’m fine,” I croak.
“Yeah,” Lincoln says, spreading my eyelid open as Thomas hands him the flashlight I just threw. He shines it right into my pupil, and I jerk my head away, reaching out for his throat so I can strangle him.
I don’t make much progress with that move. Linc just stands up and then sits down in one of the ’copter seats, glaring at me. “What the fuck were you doing out on the damn roof in the middle of a storm?”
“Do you have any idea how fucking dangerous it is to fly this helicopter in this weather?” Thomas yells over the roar of the engine and rotors. “Fucking asshole.”
I close my eyes. “I’m fine,” I insist again, raising my voice so they might have a chance of hearing me. “I would’ve been fine if you’d left me there to wake up on my own.”
I don’t—can’t—open my eyes again after that. I’m too wiped out. There’s not a chance in hell of me staying awake right now.
So I don’t bother fighting it. I just drift off, listening to the song of the city, telling me exactly what I need to do next.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN - LULU
I feel like I’ve been dropped head-first into a really bad Jax Justice episode, mid-second season, and everyone around me has been following along since the pilot.
I worked hard on that analogy during my first hour in the cave as I tried to come to grips with the gaping hole that opened up like jaws in the snow-covered mountain meadow to allow the helicopter to swoop in—and right now I’m tired enough, confused enough, and frightened enough to let a small chuckle seep up from my lips and burst out.
The light-woman named Sheila, who’s babysitting me so I don’t touch anything I’m not supposed to in the technology-laden lair of Lincoln Wade—AKA Bike Boy—and oh yeah, he’s looking more and more like the guilty guy I imagined him to be earlier this morning—scowls at me from across the cave, her holographic image more pure and perfect than any digitized form has a right to be.
I stifle the giggle.
Case is in another room but I can see him through a large plate-glass window from the desk I’m sitting at.
Sheila is also in that room. Which is freaky. Two of them? Or are they just one and she makes copies of herself?
That Sheila is busy flitting around Case, who’s lying on some kind of… operating table that reminds me of a dentist’s chair.
This Sheila is glowing faintly from the cast-off light of a massive institutional-sized aquarium that holds luminescent jellyfish, and looks really worried.
Like I said, really bad Jax Justice episode.
Suddenly Steve is looking more like an ally than I first thought.
An alarm goes off in the… operating room and I get to my feet.
“Stay where you are, Miss Lightly,” this Sheila says. “No one needs you interfering in there.”
“Is he OK?” I ask.
This Sheila glares at me. “Does he look OK?”
I slump back down into the desk chair and watch the expressions on both Lincoln Wade’s and Thomas Brooks’ faces as that Sheila barks off a status report that makes no sense to me at all.
Detective Molly Masters is in there too, one hand over her mouth like she’s in shock and can’t believe what she’s hearing, the other gripping a stainless-steel counter to steady herself.
I sigh, becoming irritable at my lack of information.
“You’re the one who insisted on coming,” this Shei
la says. “You should’ve stayed behind.”
Since I got here an hour ago, I have learned to ignore her. She’s highly argumentative and persistent in her rancor at my presence. Or maybe it’s just the situation as a whole. But mostly I think it’s me setting her off. She keeps looking at me from the corner of her digitized eye, like this is all my fault.
I haven’t even had time to take everything in or even wonder what all this shit is or why this reclusive billionaire has a need for such a… laboratory.
Because that’s what this is. It’s a lab. Oh, there are cars and motorcycles. Lots of those giant red toolboxes and the whole place smells like a cross between engine oil and salt water. But I know what this is.
Another alarm sounds in the… operating room.
This time Lincoln has a huge syringe filled with milky-white liquid and a needle that has to be as long as my whole hand, and he sticks it right into Case’s…
“What the fuck?” I ask, getting to my feet again. “What the fuck is he—”
“Sit. Down,” this Sheila says, appearing directly in front of me.
I know she’s made of light. I know I could walk right through her. And maybe I would do that… in other circumstances. But in this circumstance, she has a small army of servo robots milling about the floor of the cave and those things aren’t made of light and some of them have pincer claws.
I shiver as one comes right up to my feet, then look at this Sheila with an angry glare.
“We know what we’re doing,” this Sheila says, her tone slightly—not much—but slightly softer.
Molly Masters sticks her head out the door of the operating room and barks, “Where’s that nanite thing?”
This Sheila points to a large equipment cabinet on the far side of the cave and says, “Top shelf. In the white autoclave bags.”
“What the fuck are they doing?” I ask.
“Saving his life,” this Sheila says. “Now please, just shut up. I’m worried enough as it is without your mouth pissing me off.”
Molly Masters grabs something in a white paper envelope that crinkles in her hand and then looks over her shoulder at me with a sympathetic frown. “Don’t worry, we know what to do.”
When she goes back inside the operating room she closes the door behind her and then flips a switch on the wall and the transparent window goes opaque.
I let out a long breath of air, but… I have to admit, not being able to see inside anymore actually allows me to relax.
Out of my hands, I guess.
“We should go upstairs,” this Sheila says.
“No,” I object. “I can’t just go upstairs. Not with all this happening down here.”
I don’t even know what upstairs is. Sometimes the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t. Or… however that saying goes.
One of the bigger robots, with some of the larger pincer claws, bumps up against my leg. I look at this Sheila as she says, with much more force than the first time, “We’re going upstairs. Follow me, please.”
In what kind of world do I, Lulu Lightly, well-educated lawyer and assistant district attorney of Cathedral City, have to follow the orders of a holographic image?
“Ow,” I say, pulling my leg away from the mutant lobster-bot’s grabby claws. “Fine.”
I reluctantly follow her across the lab, past the massive rainbow-colored luminescent jellyfish, and towards a dark entrance that is almost pitch black.
“Just walk up the stairs and I’ll have the door opened on the other end,” this Sheila says. She fades away as I enter. And I realize there must not be any of those lighthouse things to project her in the winding stairwell. Which, by the way, totally look like they lead to and from a dungeon, because the walls are made of stone.
I stop just short of the first turn and wonder if I could hide in here. If the lobster-bot can’t climb stairs, I bet—
“Keep walking, Miss Lightly,” comes this Sheila’s voice from above. “I have attack drones if you choose to hide in there. They will flush you out and—”
“Fine,” I huff, and continue my climb until I see a light up ahead. Sheila is standing at the top, waiting. She waves me through into a grand, open living room and when I look back to where I just came from, I realize there’s a secret panel in the wall next to a massive floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace.
I think I just came out of the Batcave. In fact, now that I realize I’m in some kind of massive mansion, I might actually be at Wayne Manor.
Or Wade Manor, as it may be.
“You can rest up here. Help yourself to whatever you want in the kitchen. Don’t snoop upstairs and no, there’s no secrets up there, but it’s still under construction and I wouldn’t want you to accidentally shoot yourself in the foot with a nail gun.”
As if.
Sheila disappears.
“Hey!” I call out. “Where are you going?”
She rematerializes. “Back downstairs to my other half. It takes energy to be two of me. Wouldn’t you rather I use all my power to help Case? Or are you too scared to be left alone—”
“Fine,” I say, huffing some hair out of my eyes. “Go.”
She does. And the secret panel door closes shut in silent finality.
I’m in Lincoln Wade’s house. Just like Randy wanted me to be.
But even though I still think Randy is right about these people, I have no interest in that directive right now. The only thing on my mind is Case.
I sink into a soft leather couch and pull my knees up to my chest. I woke up to Steve begging me to get dressed, put on my coat, bring my phone, and follow him upstairs. I could tell something was wrong. His voice was filled with stress and Case was missing from the rug where we’d fallen asleep.
He could only take me as far as the back bedroom, but his body flickered into a video of Case, up on the roof, completely naked, lying in a pool of blood.
Steve had to tell me how to get up on the roof, but he talked me through it via a small drone that was in danger of being blown away in the wind.
Case woke up for like one second, then fell back into unconsciousness again. And Steve barked out the phone number of his friend Thomas, and from there… the rescue, the fight over me being left behind, and then the ride out here to the mountains.
What the fuck was he doing up there? And what was all that blood? I couldn’t find any marks on him. Not one. But he had a knife in his hand. And even though he was naked, his body was warm and all the snow was melted underneath him.
I don’t have any idea how long he was out there. I don’t even know what time it is.
That gets me moving, my eyes searching for a clock. I find a digitized one in the kitchen, and it says five thirty AM.
I’ve been here over an hour now. And it was a pretty long ride in the helicopter. He was out there for hours and hours, at least. We fell asleep so early. Later afternoon or early evening.
“He’s not going to make it.”
“He’s going to make it,” a soft voice says behind me.
I turn to find Molly Masters leaning on the long black stone countertop, hand scrubbing down her face like she’s been through war.
“He was out there for a long time.”
She sighs. “It’s OK. He’s… special. He’s going to pull through. We’ve stabilized him with the nanites and a jellyfish cocktail. It’s got his heart rate up and his core temperature down. Lincoln can fill you in on more when he come upstairs.”
“When will that be?”
“Soon,” she says. “Sheila will stay downstairs with him. She’s highly equipped to handle this kind of thing, Lulu. So don’t worry. Case will wake up soon and he’ll be… fine.”
“Fine?” I ask. “I don’t know what any of that means. Nanites and jellyfish cocktail.” I have to shake my head, it’s so ridiculous. “But fine is not the word I’d use to describe what he’ll be when… if… he wakes up.”
“Like I said.” Molly sighs. “Lincoln can explain. Would you like som
e coffee?”
I give up. I have no clue what’s happening. I have no frame of reference for any of this. It’s out of my hands.
“One of the other detectives,” Molly says, walking past me to a large pantry on the other side of the kitchen, “brought me the most amazing cinnamon-flavored coffee the other day. It’s so addictive.”
“Really? That’s strange. I’ve been drinking that same coffee down at City Hall.”
“Well, I guess word travels fast. That new coffeehouse in the city center must be doing great business.”
“What’s the word on the riots?” I ask. “Were you there last night?”
“Yes,” Molly says. “I’m going to be in so much trouble for leaving work last night. But when Thomas called about Case…” She trails off. “I just feel so… guilty. Like this is all my fault.”
“Why would it be your fault?” I ask.
“It’s a long story. And I’m probably not allowed to tell it, so I should just shut up. But anyway. I have a lot of guilt right now.”
I take the hint and let it go. If she tells me something I might have to use it against her later. And I’d rather not. “So the riots were bad?”
“Jesus Christ. The whole city is a mess, not just downtown. The power was still out when I left and there was no estimate of it coming back on any time soon.”
“What made it go out?”
“No one is talking, but…”
“But?” I prod her.
“But it looks like a hack. From the inside. Someone hacked into the data center and…” She sighs and shakes her head. Like she’s unable or unwilling to say.
“What did they do?”
“They rewrote the code and gave the power company a new set of operating instructions. Everything still works, but it won’t come online and if we try to force it, some people think it might self-destruct. Corrupt all the code and take it offline for… well, months, maybe. We can’t risk it. Months without power? Can you imagine what that city would degenerate into?”