“You of all people should know how stupid I can be.”
Vika raised an eyebrow, and damn was it ever sexy. “Since this was a small caliber pistol and I did not have hollow point shells, a perfect dead center shot was not the best place to shoot. There was a very small chance that a dead center bullet will enter and exit relatively cleanly, severing his corpus callosum, but not killing him. And Ostafal probably had more hot air in his skull than brain, so it was probably a fifty percent chance it would miss gray matter altogether.” She kicked the dead body.
“If you really want somebody dead, put a round through one whole side of his brain. There is no way for a bullet to travel nicely through that much. It’s a probability of zero that he gets back up.”
Michael nodded. She did have a good reason. That didn’t make it true, but if it wasn’t, she was one hell of a liar. She’s one hell of a … Everything else. I suppose lying would be the least surprising of them.
They turned back to investigate Pain. He gave that corpse a wide birth. He wasn’t afraid exactly, more like justifiably cautious. Yes, that was it. Michael did not fear dead men. Of course not. Fortunately, he had nothing to fear. Pain’s head had been blown almost completely off. Whatever gun DeShawn had used was much larger than Vika’s.
Michael almost laughed as he saw the body of Pain’s associate. The wound was identical to Ostafal’s, except he had been shot from behind. Son of a Bitch—she was telling the truth. She doesn’t ever smogging miss.
Thaddeus embraced his large companion. It made sense; the two of them seemed to be best friends. DeShawn’s limbs hung at his sides and he seemed content to simply be hugged. Thaddeus rocked him back and forth as if he were comforting a frail old woman. Two men that size shouldn’t hug like that, Michael thought. Still, there was something pure about it. Tears streamed down DeShawn’s cheeks and his chest heaved in big, pathetic man-sobs. Men that size shouldn’t cry either. Even so, Michael felt a pang of pity for him. Whatever was making him cry wasn’t anything to laugh about.
Fifty meters away, he saw Tanya. She is alive too! This couldn’t get any better. Luthor shouted at her, and the two ran and embraced. Luthor twirled her around as they hugged. Michael suddenly felt very alone. Was he really jealous of two overgrown hulks of humanity— which were both men—and a couple who had been together since he was in diapers?
Yes. Yes, he was.
He turned and looked at Vika, the only other person there who was not currently locked in an embrace. She also happened to be the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, that didn’t hurt. Worth a shot, he thought. He smiled faintly at her.
“Don’t even think about it,” she said.
Michael lowered his head. He’d hoped for the briefest on instants, that she might have actually been interested. No. Impossible, this is “Agent Veronika.” I must have imagined what she said about smiling.
He thought he basically understood women. True, they were still confusing as hell, and way more contradictory than the quantum world could ever hope to be. But over the years he had figured out some of the basics and had consistent success as a result. Vika was another animal altogether. She didn’t react to him right. His smile softened women, turned them into putty. If he wanted, he could mold that putty. Even lesbians didn’t mind his smile. They might give a mildly confused look, but were often still grateful for the gesture. Vika was like smiling at a stone, it just bounced off, or punched you.
The embraces ended and the awkward moment subsided. Tanya ran up and hugged Thaddeus and DeShawn. Michael could feel the faint shift in gravity she caused as she approached. “How did you two get here?”
Thaddeus quickly explained the call from a man claiming to know Luthor. He and DeShawn had followed on foot and had arrived just in time to save all their lives.
“Qwiz,” Luthor said, “I owe that guy a beer. No, make that a case of mountain dew.”
“That is once we can smogging use our credits again,” Michael corrected.
“Touché.”
“I hate to break this up guys,” Tanya said, “but the carps are swarming everywhere.”
“How did you get by them?”
“I convinced the sniper he could fly—I’m afraid it didn’t go too well for him. I suspect he— and his gun— might be more interesting than a Markless woman wandering by.”
Vika threw her head back and laughed. It was a weird noise. “Well done!” she said, clapping her on the back.
“They thought that rifle of his had been the source of the gun shots. But I doubt they will be convinced for long.”
“Don’t worry guys, we got this,” Thaddeus said.
“Yeah, we will steer them away from you,” echoed DeShawn.
“But what if the carps think you did it?” said Michael.
Thaddeus wagged his massive hand at them, “sure, a couple of homeless bums could take down dudes with gelvar? I don’t even have a Mark. I hope they arrest me!”
DeShawn smiled, large yellowing teeth squeezed out between his lips. “And if they get mad and shoot me, it’s what I deserve. I’m just glad I was able to get one good deed done in my life. I saved you guys.”
Thadd patted his friend on the back. “You might have just saved the whole world. Maybe in a few years they can even feed our fat asses.”
“Go with God, friends,” DeShawn said.
They turned and started walking toward the carps. Tanya looked like she had more tears blooming.
“And if you ever get back to this shit hole again, look us up!” Thaddeus called after them.
DeShawn punched him in the arm.
“Sorry Jesus!”
#
Luthor couldn’t have been more surprised with his long-time girlfriend. Not only had she discovered yet another use of 126, but had killed a man. Her attitude had been so negative toward any violence whatsoever; it defied reason that she could possibly take a life herself.
She had been distant since the boat. Not that he could blame her for her attitude, in the past month she had discovered that PTSD was a cold-blooded ghost haunting him. Obviously, she knew that he had been in the war, but he very seldom mentioned it and never discussed the details. His familiarity with death and killing must have come as a painful surprise.
But now it was different. She acted warmly toward him, she had run forward to embrace him. She had changed. She didn’t make him feel like a monster any more. He still was, nothing could change that, but it felt good not to have her think of him as one. Hopefully, she wouldn’t discover the rest and change her mind.
After they’d put a block between themselves and the carps, Michael stopped them. “Um, sorry to pollute everything, but we now don’t have any way to get to Chicago.”
“We certainly can’t go in the front door,” Tanya said. “There had to have been some carp who saw our faces.”
“Or a video feed that recorded us,” Luthor added.
“Don’t be dumb,” Michael chided. “Nobody is going to pay the electricity bill to run a live video feed when there are CPI scanners everywhere. The only places worth filming anymore are the food markets. You know that.”
“Could the signal inverter still be in the terminal?” Luthor asked.
“I don’t know, but it’s a helluva risk to find out. If it is still there, it’d be by the bathroom where I dropped it.”
“It hasn’t been that long,” Tanya said, “maybe no one picked it up.”
“We should search for it,” Vika said. “We didn’t use our tickets yet, and I do not think anyone will recognize us.”
“Why not?”
“Before you made friends with the dogs, I made friends with an Acela engineer.”
Luthor recalled wanting to overhear her conversation with the man by the bathroom. Perhaps it had been more productive than he expected.
“You? Making friends?” asked Michael.
Vika gave him a flat look. “Men treat me as a confessional booth. He told me his whole life story. Including
the duty schedules of the station. The next shift of carps is transitioning in as we speak.”
“As long as we don’t look like the pictures they have of us, that should work.” Tanya said.
“And we need the scanner,” Luthor added.
“Do we look different enough to be safe?” Michael asked.
Luthor stopped and looked at himself in the window of passing storefront. This dyed hair looked nothing like any he’d ever had. His face was partially obscured by the stubble of half a week of street living and he was dirty enough to look a slightly darker race than he actually was. Tanya looked equally different, with short black hair instead of her normal long auburn locks, and Vika was grungier than Luthor had realized. Michael, who looked the most like himself, was still doing a great imitation of a suburban refugee. Luthor began to hope they might still sneak out of there.
“I think we should give it a shot,” Luthor said, “but I am out of there if there are any more dogs. They hate 126.”
No passengers exited the doors, but that didn’t stop the menagerie of various forms of human-powered taxi to wait impatiently at the curbside. A few well-dressed people milled around, presumably also waiting for passengers. The carbon police were divided between the river and the sniper with a mouthful of pavement. He didn’t see any in the terminal.
“Again, well done, Tanya,” said Vika.
“Thanks. I’m sorry I was such an ass about…. everything.”
Down in the terminal they did see a lonely carbon cop. He was examining a non-descript duffle bag by the bathroom. “Shit,” Michael said.
That pretty much summed up Luthor’s feelings about it as well. While they watched, he picked up the bag and carried it to a nearby office, similar to where Vika had been questioned in the subway.
“I think it’s time we do things my way,” said Vika.
Tanya sighed, “I am willing, but Vika? It doesn’t mean I want you blasting everyone.”
“Sure, no killing.”
Luthor didn’t want to think about the latitude contained in not killing.
“We sneak down the rail, eliminate any carps in our way and use whatever 126 is left to break onto the train before it is moving too fast.”
Luthor did not like the sound of Vika’s way one bit.
“Wait,” Michael said, “what did Jose say about the effective range of the inverter?”
Luthor thought for a moment. “He said it was 10 meters, but not to risk more than 5.”
“Look where the carp put it. That baby is sitting in his office maybe 7 or 8 meters from the security checkpoint and it can’t be more than five from the first train entrance. It could still work.”
Luthor hadn’t noticed, but Michael was right. If they hurried before the carps had a chance to examine the contents of the bag, it might still mask their CPI chips.
#
Five minutes later they walked into the rear door of the train. The inverter had worked. It was lost to the bowels of whatever bureaucracy carbon contraband was sent to, but who cared. They had made it out of the city, Pain was dead, and things were looking up.
Rows of comfortable seats flanked a center aisle. They sat down into a set of four seats that faced each other. Luthor sank into the leather cushion. He realized that it had been the first comfortable seat he had experienced since he had been dragged out of the carp car.
Tanya leaned her head on Luthor’s shoulder. That felt good too. A fine change indeed.
After a few moments, the train doors shut and the high-speed Acela began its slow acceleration West across the bridge.
#
Acela Train, Somewhere in Indiana
In the hours since they had last stopped Michael had finally been given enough quiet to try and dig out the truth underneath Vika’s strange behavior. “You made me smile.” The stupid phrase stuck to him like Eli’s polymer. What exactly did that mean? Was she actually interested in something romantic? Fat chance at that. She hated all men thanks to Dimarin and Jacques. More likely, she found Michael a humorous commodity, like a late-night comedian. Only he didn’t get paid.
The train continued hurtling toward Chicago. He was quickly running out of time. He nodded at Vika indicating he wanted her to accompany him. They stood up and walked toward the front of the train. Green countryside whizzed by the windows at 300 kilometers per hour.
“What do you want?” asked Vika in her predictably terse tone.
“A word,” he replied.
“You may have your word, just remember my rule.”
How could I forget? ‘you hit on me, I hit you.’
“I remember.”
They stopped at the bar where wealthy—or alcoholic—patrons waited for drinks. They didn’t order anything. A few people glared at the dirty couple, but otherwise didn’t bother them.
“What was that in the alley in New York? Remember, right before we were all about to get shot and die?”
The immutable Vika-stare suddenly became mutable. He’d touched a nerve. Maybe there was something to it after all. The bartender crushed ice in a blender behind them.
“Don’t concern yourself with it.”
“Too late, I already have. You know what it sounded like Vika? It sounded like you were unburdening.”
She shifted uncomfortably. “Perhaps I was.”
“What exactly were you trying to get off your chest? Why, as you stared death in the face, would you mention how I made you smile?”
She hesitated, glancing sideways at the bartender as he delayed picking up the ringing bar phone.
After a moment she looked at him square in the face. It was like trying to stare down a tiger. “I did not want to die having any regrets, Laramy,” she paused, uncertainty spilling into her facial expressions. “I did not want you to believe that I—”
The bartender loudly answered the phone.
“That you what?”
“—That I did not appreciate your company lately.”
Michael wasn’t sure what to think. The woman was infuriatingly unclear.
“Thanks. Coming from you,” he stuttered, “that is quite the compliment. But I still don’t understand why that was so important. I mean, why choose that as your final statement before you die?”
She raised an eyebrow. Michael worried for a moment that he had gone too far. But she wasn’t looking at him. Her focus had trained back on the bartender. Michael had been so intently focused on Vika’s every twitch looking for hidden meaning that he hadn’t noticed the man’s conversation. Bad move.
He picked up the tail end of it. “Are you certain that’s really necessary?” he paused waiting for an answer that Michael could not hear, “but it would be great for business… That’s at least another half-hour that thirsty folks could be spending money here, why should they have to spend all that time in their seats…Are you serious? How can there be a security threat? …. How are you just finding this out now?... This train started in Boston for smog’s sake.” The bartender grimaced. “Fine. But it’s such a waste.” He mashed his finger on the end button.
Vika and Michael shared a glance that spoke volumes. They were stuck on a train traveling at three hundred kilometers per hour and the carps were going to do a systematic scan of everyone’s CPI chips. No place to run, no place to hide.
“Move,” Vika said.
“But—”
“Bar’s closing people. I’m sorry,” the bartender shouted, “not my call on this one. You’ll have to finish your drinks and head back to your seats.”
The many patrons of the moving alcohol repository blustered their protest. Vika walked quickly out of the bar, Michael stayed on her heels.
“Vika! You didn’t ever answer my—”
She grabbed a fistful of his grimy shirt and slammed him into a bathroom door. She was deceptively strong. “Don’t press your luck,” she said, but let go of his shirt and patted him softly on the cheek. “I have become fond of you, okay?”
Michael tried to speak but nothing
intelligible came out.
“Don’t let it go to your head,” she walked away.
#
Vika mentally added the prerequisite of actually being shot to any future unburdening. She shouldn’t have said anything at all. Words. So ineffective. They always made things more complicated than they needed to be. All she had wanted was a clean conscience. Now, because she had opened her polluted mouth, Michael had all sorts of other ideas as to her real purpose. She balled up her fist and told herself again that she had no interest in him that way. Definitely not.
The train had slowed noticeably. They could make their move soon. The speakers instructed them to remain in their seats, an instruction she had no intention of following. She wasn’t even going to remain on the train.
“Please tell me there is another option,” Luthor pleaded when she had told them her plan.
“Join the Phylum Chordata, Luthor. Grow a backbone,” Michael said.
“This is the best way,” Tanya added, “we can escape the train, and nobody needs to die in order to do it.”
“I might,” Luthor replied.
Vika shook her head. “Don’t hesitate.”
“Seriously, I’m not sure I can do this.”
Luthor and his fear of heights. Actions were the only form of communication that would suffice to deal with him. She grabbed the red emergency bar on the window and pulled. The window popped out and the wind howled through the cabin. Alarms sounded shrilly enough for her to hear over the gale. Other passengers stared openly at them. A few witnesses would hardly matter, their faces were already all over the news. It could place them firmly in the Chicago metro area, but Chicago was a big place.
Tanya already had her BOGs out. Leave it to a woman to know how to take charge. Simultaneously, both of them slapped 126 up on the side of the train. They climbed out.
The enhanced gravity made the climb out of the train surprisingly simple. In moments they were up top, wind violently whipping their faces. Vika reached inside and pulled Luthor kicking and screaming outside. At least the altered gravity meant she didn’t have to lift his full weight. They lay down to minimize the effect of the howling airstream.
Ahead the skyscrapers had grown from meager three-story tenements to horrific hundred story monstrosities. From a distance, the skyline resembled a pyramid or a volcano made of steel and concrete.
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