“Why?”
“Will you take me to him if I tell you why?”
Robert picked up a paperclip, as if he was considering her question. Then, “Nope.”
Silence. She would hate that, of course.
“I think the fact that Packard sent me trumps any vow you’ve made to keep the whereabouts of the Monk a secret.”
“I only deal with Packard.”
She leaned forward and he sucked in her bright scent; another few inches and he could taste her lips, plunge into the warmth of her mouth. “Are there no circumstances in which you’d bring me to the Monk?
“None,” he said, highly aware of his heart speeding up, his cock hardening. The memories of all the times they’d fucked—the tender hours on the roof, slowly, slowly worshipping each other. Or their brave and inventively dirty scenarios in ruined places, untainted by the boringness of porn—it was as though the memory of that was in his cells, his body, and it was being pulled out by her nearness. They’d been so much more than lovers—they’d been soulmates, artistic collaborators, best friends. She’d encouraged his dreams and his hopes. And then she’d demolished them.
She said, “Haven’t you ever heard the saying, Only a fool is certain and immovable?”
“Well, I guess we know what that makes me.”
Darkness passed over her face as she straightened up. “Don’t. You’re not.”
“You still don’t get to see the Monk.” He began to unbend the paperclip. He could interface with the atoms of the most massive skyscrapers in Midcity, making the walls soft as quicksand or hard as rock; he could use his force fields to prop up entire buildings for repair workers, but he couldn’t get a stupid paperclip to go the way he wanted.
“Robbie, you are so crazy. You know that?” She snatched the paperclip from his fingers. “Look what you’ve done.” She held it up accusingly, leaned nearer, and looked into his eyes. This was something she used to do: lean in near, right before they kissed, while holding him off with a hand, and the space between them would feel so alive. And then they would devour each other. It struck him now as a convenient distance from which to revise his memory. “Paperclips, dude. This is not your medium.”
“How do you know?”
She snorted, twirling it between two fingers, eyes on his. A memory revisionist locked into your mind through your eyes—he knew that now. She would stare at you, and eventually there would come a point of no return where you couldn’t look away. Once she had you, she could go in and rub away your recent memory, the way you might rub a word off a chalkboard. She could leave a blank there, or put something new in. Would she have the audacity to put Packard in? Commanding him to take her to the Monk? No, she wouldn’t. She didn’t know his and Packard’s relationship well enough. Sophia was a user and a liar, but she wasn’t an idiot.
He took back the paperclip, bent it some more.
“You have an eyelash about to go into your eye,” she said.
“I do?”
She leaned nearer. He liked feeling her face near his. He wanted it to last.
“Oh, Robbie hold still.” She touched his cheek, brought his attention back to her, leaning closer still. Should he let this happen? Had he left himself enough clues?
“An eyelash hair. Let me get it out.” She held up a finger. “Okay?” She waited until he met her eyes again.
“Okay.” He promptly broke their gaze and set the paperclip on the desk, in front of where he usually faced.
“Come on!” She laughed and clapped a hand on his shoulder, held his chin with her thumb and her finger, smiling into his eyes. She was so beautiful. “Hold still.”
He gazed at her now, soaking in her touch. He would do this. He would let her revise him, and they would play this scene over and over. He didn’t need to remember the specifics; memory was overrated. Relationships were overrated. Everything was overrated. There wasn’t a point to anything, wasn’t that what he always told his victims? No meaning, nothing to believe in. That’s what he told them as he destroyed their faith in whatever they cherished, as he destroyed their faith in things they might someday cherish. He had the power of force fields and a terrifically dark despair that Packard had taught him to weaponize, and this made him more dangerous than the other disillusionists—she’d heard right about that part. He worked in isolation, rendering his victims as empty as he was. He took their hopes, their dreams, their faith, their everything—just what Sophia had taken from him.
Hardcore criminals tended to benefit from disillusionment in the long run, often with a change of heart. They would build back new hopes and dreams and beliefs. Humans were designed to hope.
But not him. Not anymore.
And now there was this. The woman he used to love, touching his face, acting as if she cared. He would let her revise him, he would see what she was up to. Her powers didn’t allow her to take more than a day, but she’d likely only take her visit. Hell, let her take what she pleased. Robert was the Monk. He cherished nothing. This one fact made him far more dangerous than she could ever be.
He looked into her eyes, allowed himself to relax into her hold. It seemed more intimate somehow than being in her arms, than fucking her, even, because she was showing him something secret and true about herself. He wanted to see more, to see this thing she did. Of course he would have seen it before, but she would have erased it from his mind, and he wanted to see it now—to see her. He wanted her bared to him, not physically, but metaphorically. Maybe the repulsion of seeing who she was would sink in somehow, break him of wanting her. Warmth crept up his neck as he breathed her in; his fingers itched to slide onto her thighs. What would she do? He imagined sliding his hands further, around her ass, pulling her against his rock-hard cock, kissing her, tasting her lips, her tongue, invading her right back. Yeah, that would derail her control. Sophia hated surprises, hated to be derailed, which would make such a kiss all the more exciting
Christ, who was he fooling? He wanted her, that’s all. He was like a pathetic trained dog. He clenched his jaw against the want, the heat. If he touched her like that, gave in like that, he’d hate himself.
He’d let her have her coy little intrusion, and then he’d make her sorry she’d ever messed with him.
He felt when she had him. He was still generating thought, but things were soft. Things grew fuzzier. A strange calm descended over him.
*** *** ***
A little after five o’ clock Robert could swear he breathed her in—not so much a perfume or whatever so much as… her. Unmistakable Sophia. You didn’t spend your formative years obsessed with a woman only to forget the sensation of breathing her in. With her bright scent came all the heart-swelling emotions of that time—the love and the lust, the anticipation of seeing her. The bewilderment. The rage.
Was he hallucinating? He’d always thought her scent was a mixture of her hair, her soaps, and her sweat, blended together. Why now? He looked around the tower office, eyed a magazine in the little pile of mail in the corner. Was there a perfume sample in there or something?
But it was too specific, too her. The emotions that came with it felt nearly unbearable. He’d loved and dreamed so hard with her, and fell so far.
He thought of the green scarf she’d left it in his little room in the conscripted labor barracks of her family compound. He never told her he had it; he’d just kept it for himself, to touch to his cheek. Until the day he figured out what she’d done.
He spread his hands on the desk, feeling down into the Tangle, searching for grounding.
And then he saw the paperclip. A paperclip in the shape of an S, right in the place where he put to-do notes, as if the S was a note to himself. Again he looked at the clock. Was it late? Had he lost time? His computer was asleep; he’d assume he’d been daydreaming if it wasn’t for the scent, the paperclip. Would she really come back after all these years and revise him yet again?
No. Not possible.
Yet…
The idea energized him with a strange
fury. What could she want? Did she think he didn’t know by now that she was a memory revisionist? Of course not. She saw him as a dupe. Always had.
Was the paper clip the only clue? No, there had to be more. He shuffled around the folders, feeling like a detective of his own habits. Would he have typed something? He woke up the machine and went to the last document open, and there it was, right up there on the screen.
She wants to be taken to the Monk.
Robert stared at the line for a long time. The Monk? Only Packard knew he was the Monk, and Packard was long gone. Or was he? Did Packard need him? No. And if he did, he wouldn’t send Sophia.
Robert had met Packard over ten years ago, right after the Tangle was complete. Packard had burst into Robert’s tower. “It’s brilliant,” Packard told him. “I can’t stop looking at it. I can’t believe what you’ve done here!” Packard got Robert to take him through it, inside and out. Packard had wanted to stop, to ask questions at every point. He wanted to know how it affected Robert to externalize his hopelessness like that, to keep all that chaos going.
Then, a couple years later, Packard had invited him to that weird Mongolian restaurant of his and asked him to work as a disillusionist. Packard wanted to teach him to zing out his immense darkness—he said Robert would be a natural. Packard usually only taught regular humans to be disillusionists, but he was making an exception with Robert being a highcap. On and on he went with the reasons, until he got to the only one that mattered: Robert would stay sane longer, which meant he’d be able to work on the Tangle for more years. Your life’s work, Packard had called it.
Scary level of insight, that Packard.
Robert looked at the words on the screen again; words he’d typed himself. She wants to be taken to the Monk. Taken. At least Packard hadn’t divulged that he, Robert, was the Monk. But why tell at all? There had to be something in it for Packard—that was how Packard rolled. But what? Surely he didn’t think Robert would actually reveal anything to Sophia.
She wants to be taken to the Monk. She.
He smiled bitterly. Still only one She in his life.
Robert had practically grown up at the Sidway family compound, though not in the main house, like Sophia. No, he lived in the workers’ housing from the time he was maybe five. It wasn’t exactly a prison; it was more a dorm where the workers couldn’t leave, because they were working off gambling debts or they were immigrants working off illegal passage, and the alternative was being killed. Robert stayed because it was the only home he knew, aside from vague, fuzzy memories of something before it.
He was raised by the illegal immigrants and gamblers working off Sidway debts. Some became like fathers, and it was heartbreaking when their terms would be up, and they’d leave. A few of them were charged with teaching him reading and math, but they all pitched in, and he enjoyed helping them at the construction site.
Even at the age of five, he could smooth walls and stabilize framed-up buildings so that the men could crawl around on top. Of course, Robert had special privileges the men didn’t have, too. For example, he got to have his own dog—Baron, a small beagle-terrier mutt, and he got to keep Baron with him in his tiny room on cold nights. And he played outside with Sophia and her friends out on the grounds, when he wasn’t at the construction sites.
The story went that Boss and Mrs. Sidway had found him on their doorstep and, instead of giving Robert up to the awful Midcity orphanage, they’d given him a home and started him in a trade. Robert felt it was a fair shake, especially as he grew older and came to understand that most highcap kids had it far worse. Most highcap kids had to hide their powers or be rejected; his powers were embraced, and he learned how to strengthen them, even use them in spectacular ways that sometime awed his crewmates; they and the Sidways were the only ones who knew what he was. And of course, he loved the work, loved to help shape Midcity’s biggest and most glorious residential and commercial properties. He was glad he didn’t have to go to school; it made him happy to work on buildings.
Robert’s ability to stabilize structures, or to change the form and surface of metal and steel, enabled Sidway crews to slap up buildings at four times the speed of human-only crews—for a fraction of the cost.
At the age of thirteen, Robert could create a force field that would hold up a three-story office building. He could go from one site to another, setting up force field after force field, or removing the ones that were done. He could touch a stone wall and interface with its atoms and, after an hour or more of concentrated thought, he could form elaborate frescos, or strange, ultra-modern gargoyles, though anything artistic like that was forbidden.
He and Sophia grew close when they were around fourteen. He’d sneak off construction sites and she’d sneak away from school and they’d meet, two rebellious and high-spirited teens, offended that anybody would forbid their friendship.
By age sixteen, they were in love. The forbidden-ness helped stoke it, especially the fact that Sophia’s dangerous and criminal father might literally kill Robert if he knew they were having sex. But the love was real enough—for Robert, anyway. Robert’s love for Sophia infused everything he did—his secret art projects became bolder, brighter. He stabilized bigger buildings, and smoothed out the most pathetic sheetrock jobs. Even the way he walked across a construction site was lighter. His love for Sophia animated his life, and stoked a fire in his chest so bright, sometimes he felt like the sun was blazing inside his heart. He loved Sophia’s bravery, her sense of play and her mischievous ideas. He loved her flaming hair and ivory skin, and the way her veins showed through the skin on her hands and ankles. He loved the two splotches of pink that would appear on her China doll cheeks when it was cold outside. He loved the pale red-gold of her eyelashes—so light as to be nearly translucent, like whispery blonde feathers around her eyes. And he loved her toughness. She was his protector and he was hers.
When he was seventeen or eighteen, he got the bug for finding his parents, and Sophia became his passionate ally. Even then she hated a closed door, a secret, the word No.
They scoured news stories, birth records. Sophia became convinced that her dad would’ve gotten a private investigator to hunt down Robert’s origins. He wouldn’t leave anything to chance—he would want to know who you are, she’d assured him.
One night when her parents were out at one of their endless parties with Midcity’s mobster elite, Sophia and Robert broke into her father’s office. They found Robert’s file in with the other workers’ files, but it wasn’t the investigator records they expected. The file contained letters and papers full of numbers. Interest calculations, it seemed, though it never said what for. Robert rifled through. The dates went back a decade, some a bit more. Some were signed by a Nance Perkins.
Sophia had grown silent. She knew what she was seeing—Robert could tell, and he bullied it out of her.
It means gambling, Sophia told him. Loans to cover.
Robert was well aware by then that Sidway Construction was only the most visible of Boss Sidway’s moneymaking operations, but what did gambling debts have to do with him? The woman was his mother? That was the implication? Did his mother have debts to Sophia’s father, or somebody her father controlled?
Sophia tried to get him to forget it. Robert refused. The other letters were scrawled, hard to read. There was one paper at the end—a sum in the six figures on the left side, and the letter “R” and “13 yrs” on the right, and a line below both with signatures and dates.
Sophia paled. She was a pale girl with pale lashes, but she’d paled more.
What? R isn’t me! Robert said. I was only five when these were written.
Thirteen years of service, she finally told him. You’re paying off her debt right now and you’ll be done when you turn nineteen.
Robert remembered sinking to the cold floor, surrounded by the papers, like a bird in a sad nest.
His mother had sold him.
He pressed his hands to the marble tiles, thinkin
g to level the Sidway mansion, to level the world! But Sophia wrapped herself over him. We’re a family, you and me and Baron, she reminded him. We’re in this together. We’ll make it right together. We’ll think and be smart and be together forever.
Robert buried his face in her shoulder. He vowed to find his mother and rescue her. Then he vowed to find his mother and rage against her. He would leave Sidway—let Boss Sidway’s goons track him down and kill him. No, they might kill his mother. He would help her. She was a victim. He would to tear apart the world!
And then he’d cried.
He’d always imagined his mother had been a scared teen girl giving her baby to the richest family she could find. Wanting the best for the baby she loved.
Sophia had held him. And then she’d asked him: Do you wish you didn’t know? If you could not know, would you prefer it? Robert remembered the question seeming odd. Too serious, somehow.
Hell no, he’d said.
A minor crash on clover fifteen jolted him out of his reverie. He dispatched emergency vehicles and rerouted traffic. He hated to see such a thing; contrary to what one might think, he did what he could to promote safety on the Tangle…well, short of destroying it and thereby making it off limits to drivers, which would be the ultimate safety fix.
He picked up the S paperclip, twirled it while watching the cars reflow, thinking about Sophia’s offer to erase his memory of their discovery about his mother. He didn’t realize back then that it was indeed an offer. He didn’t know then that she was a memory revisionist. Why had she kept her highcap nature from him? She knew he was a highcap.
She convinced him to stay at the compound, and let everything seem normal. Though a Google search turned up nothing on his mother, they would track her down, she’d said, determine the situation. One of the immigrants had been killed for leaving—Boss Sidway had made sure Robert and the other workers all got a look at the body. Would Sidway hunt and kill his mother if Robert left? And he and Sophia wouldn’t be able to see each other. She reminded him of the plans they’d made to travel the world, to be artists together. Of the projects they had in process.
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