Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits

by David Wong

  “Wow. All right.”

  “Now, once we meet his people in the lobby, they’ll presumably try to transport you to another location, though probably not back to the Fire Palace. We’ll tail you wherever you go and, quite frankly, the farther away, the better—the time they spend driving you to wherever they want to meet is time for Armando to do his thing. Understand?”

  “Just barely.”

  To Armando he said, “How much time do you need?”

  “The problem is Molech can’t know I’m there until I’m in his face—the moment he knows I’m coming, he might panic and tell his man in Fort Drayton to … do something unpleasant.”

  He tapped the wall feed and a photo popped into view. It was the Fire and Ice Casino, as the twin towers had looked when they were open. Zoe thought the Ice Palace was beautiful—it really did look like a fifty-story building carved out of ice, like something out of a fantasy novel. At the top was its rooftop pool, complete with water slides and faux icebergs, the crystal blue of the glass swim bridge snaking from its roof to the Fire Palace across the street. That building had been made up to look like a charred volcano in mid-eruption, with twisting paths of roaring flames undulating down from the roof to suggest oozing lava, its rooftop pool lit from the bottom with orange lights, so swimmers could pretend they were paddling around in magma. Armando tossed up a second photo next to it, an “after” pic of the buildings as they existed today—dormant, dark, each covered from the neck down in black tarps, like they were wearing frumpy mourning dresses. The swim bridge was an empty half-pipe of filthy glass, collecting rainwater and bird crap.

  Armando said, “I think the Fire Palace is essentially impossible to infiltrate unnoticed. It has three times as many guards on the exterior, and there are vehicles entering and exiting every few minutes. The Ice Palace is our way in—the entrance is guarded, but the interior is nearly deserted. I’ll go up through the Ice Palace, across the swim bridge, then down to the Fire Palace basement. If all goes well, I could make the whole trip in … twenty minutes.”

  Wu said, “And where will I be?”

  Zoey answered, “You’ll be here, watching, and if I die you’re to pack up my cat and get him to safety. And so help me god, if you laugh at me right now I will claw your eyes out.”

  Wu did not laugh.

  Echo said to Armando, “Your implants are online. I think. The progress bar stopped. There’s a message here that looks like it’s in Elvish but it’s not blinking red or anything.”

  Armando stood, and put on his jacket. Wu strode up behind him and held out a katana, handle-first.

  “A gift, but only if you apologize for your previous mockery.”

  Armando replied, “I would, but this blade looks exactly like the one we ruined last night. The one you said was an ancient one-of-a-kind relic. This makes me think that you have a barrel full of them that you buy in bulk from Costco.”

  “No, this is my last one. Maybe I have one more somewhere.”

  “All right,” said Will. “Let’s start the game.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Five minutes until Molech’s deadline.

  The obscenity that was Livingston Tower loomed over the sedan, having turned from flat black to beet red since Zoey had seen it last (apparently the memorial service marked the end of the mourning period). It was frosted by the artificial snow, making the whole thing look like a cherry Popsicle that had just come out of the freezer. Will and Zoey were alone in the car two blocks away, close enough to see yellow caution tape had been stretched across the main entrance.

  Will said, “We had them close the building under the guise of a bomb threat. Since it’s Sunday, our offices would have been closed anyway but there are five restaurants and three brothels up there, and that’s their busiest day. We can’t have people coming in and out, every random bystander adds another variable we can’t control. Molech could take a hostage, or even worse, someone could decide to play hero.”

  Zoey brought up a video feed on her phone, coming directly from Armando’s glasses. At the moment he was on foot, a block away from his target. Through his eyes Zoey could see the derelict tower that had once been the Ice Palace hotel and casino, behind its faded black shroud. The view panned across the busy street, to the identical Fire Palace, the glass bridge undulating high overhead. Somewhere behind those walls, Zoey thought, was Molech. Hopefully.

  The camera panned back to the Ice Palace and zoomed in toward the main entrance, which was being guarded by five shirtless men who were just barely pretending to be construction workers. And this, they had said, was the least guarded of the two towers.

  Armando held out his hand, palm-up. Perched there was a black object that looked like a large insect—about the width of a half dollar. It whirred softly and levitated out of his hand, and buzzed off toward the derelict building.

  Immediately the feed switched to the point of view of the tiny drone, bobbing through the air about ten feet above street level. It passed over the elaborate hats of three passing women in church clothes, then arrived at the Ice Palace and paused, hovering over the group of guards who were smoking and conversing in front of the entrance. Graphics flashed across the screen as it scanned the faces of the guards. Then one of the men turned to go inside and when he opened the door, the drone quickly ducked in.

  The dimly lit lobby came into view, a vast expanse that apparently used to be the casino floor, before all of the slot machines and card tables had been ripped out. All that remained was a vast plain of stained carpet dotted with exposed electrical outlets. The drone performed some kind of scan of the room, a vertical blue line sweeping across the screen. It paused, as if doing some calculations, and then a series of floating red cone shapes appeared in various spots around the room. As the guard walked across the floor, one of the red cones moved with him, as if emanating from his eyes. Another came from a security camera on the wall.

  Will said, “The drone is tracking the field of vision of every human and camera in the vicinity, in real time. So it can feed Armando the exact path of floor across which a person can pass unnoticed. He just has to avoid the red patches.”

  Zoey said, “As long as he has quiet shoes. And doesn’t smell.”

  There was, however, no such path through the four remaining armed men gathered around the entrance. That was an entirely separate problem.

  Zoey heard Armando say, “Go.”

  At that moment, a low, flat black car with tinted windows rolled past the Ice Palace entrance. Its engine growled with a primal sound from another time: the menacing rumble of a massive internal combustion powerplant, sixteen cylinders igniting gasoline in a symphony of synchronized thunder. The heads of the four males guarding the doorway turned to see a Bugatti Chiron crawl past, a legendary dream machine that, even in a city packed with gaudy automobiles, could drop jaws from a block away. It pulled up to the hotel next door and rolled to a stop. It revved its engine, and the pavement trembled in fear.

  The driver’s-side door opened and a pair of bare legs swung out. A show-stopping blonde unfolded herself out of the car, an obscenely sheer red dress appearing to be her only item of clothing—it was either designed to give the illusion the wearer didn’t have on any undergarments, or else it wasn’t an illusion. The woman was Echo, under a blond wig and sunglasses, sucking on a lollipop.

  Will said, “I want to just note that this was her idea.”

  The plan had been for her to circle around the car and then bend over and look into the trunk, but it hadn’t occurred to any of them that this car didn’t in fact have a trunk. So Echo improvised and kind of just awkwardly leaned over the back as if to examine the engine, trying not to accidentally get too close to the manifolds and set her wig on fire.

  On Armando’s feed, the red cones representing the field of vision of all four guards swung in the Bugatti’s direction, and locked in place. One of the men even got out his phone to take pictures. Armando, who was dressed in paint-splattered coveralls, sim
ply walked up behind them and quietly slipped through the door.

  He made his way inside to the empty husk that had once been the Ice Palace Casino, slipping between the red vision fields of two cameras, arriving near what had been the casino’s restrooms once upon a time. He pressed his back against a doorframe and waited for a guard and his red cone to walk past, then quietly slipped into a nearby stairwell.

  Zoey tapped her phone and flipped over to the feed from her mother’s captor. The camera was advancing forward between pine trees to the soundtrack of shoes crunching through snow—the man and Zoey’s mom taking a leisurely walk through the woods. Her mother probably thought she was having a pretty nice Sunday. Sunny winter day, pristine clumps of snow dangling off pine trees, friendly new stranger with a car full of alcohol. Her captor muttered something and she laughed.

  Zoey’s guts were in knots. She wished there was a bathroom nearby.

  Will said, “Just breathe. Slow, even breaths, in for five seconds, out for five seconds. Breathe from your belly, like you’re making an air baby. Keep going over the plan in your head.”

  “I’ve completely forgotten the plan.”

  Will didn’t reply to that.

  She glanced down at her mother’s feed again, then said, “Are your parents still … around?”

  Will hesitated. “Father is. In Virginia.”

  “Your mother passed away I guess?”

  “She killed herself when I was sixteen.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  She flipped back to Armando’s feed. He was softly climbing the stairs, making painfully slow progress. Zoey noticed he had taken off his shoes. Still, one creaky floorboard and that would be that.

  Zoey said, “Are you close to your father?”

  There was a long moment before Will said, “No.”

  Silence. Zoey looked out the windshield, scanning the pedestrians wandering around outside the entrance to Livingston Tower, looking for anyone who could be the Molech henchmen she was to meet.

  She said, “I’ve always been close to my mom. She had me so young. I would say she was more like a sister, but most sisters I’ve been around don’t get along.”

  “My father had a length of chain he would hit me with if my shirts weren’t pressed to his satisfaction. And he enjoyed it more when they weren’t. The first girl I ever brought home, he made her leave and told me I could do better. He told her she was too fat for me.”

  “Ugh. I’ve been there. With stepdads.”

  Will gave her a very brief look and said, “I know.”

  Zoey said, “You wake up in the morning and dread going to school because the other kids torture you, then at the end of the school day you dread going back home, because of what’s waiting for you there.”

  He nodded, almost imperceptibly.

  On the screen, Armando was quietly but forcefully shoving open a roof access door. He stepped out into harsh wind and sunlight, the flickering torsos of Tabula Ra$a skyscrapers looming silently around him. The roof of the casino was dominated by a massive empty swimming pool, containing only puddles of melted snow and various debris that had blown in over the months. Zoey saw at least one dead bird nearby.

  Will nudged her and she looked up from her phone. There was a commotion outside the main entrance of Livingston Tower:

  Three men had pulled up, riding tigers.

  Or so it appeared. As they got closer it became clear they were on customized motorcycles, each with a snarling tiger animated across the bodywork, their feet swiping the ground as they rolled along. Incredibly, these were only the fourth most ridiculous vehicles Zoey had seen since arriving in the city. The motorcycles ripped through the yellow caution tape and parked in nearly perfect unison. Three muscular, shirtless men in leather pants stepped off, each wearing motorcycle helmets that they did not remove as they strode up to the main entrance of Livingston Tower. The revolving doors were locked, but one of the men simply grabbed one and yanked it off its hinge, tossing the four attached doors out onto the sidewalk behind them, glass shattering on the black decorative stones of the entryway. The three men vanished into the lobby.

  Zoey tried to follow Will’s breathing advice and said, “You never did show me that coin trick.”

  “You should go. There’s no reason to keep them waiting.”

  Zoey glanced down at the feed, one last time. Armando moved across the roof of the Ice Palace—alone, as far as Zoey could see. The view bounced along as he jogged toward the arched exit that led to the glass swim bridge, which would take him to the roof of the former Fire Palace and Molech’s HQ, about fifty yards away.

  Zoey took a deep breath and said, “All right. Promise me that if I don’t make it back, you’ll take care of my cat.”

  “I promise … I will hire someone to do that.”

  Zoey stepped out, and tried to appreciate that she could be about to die in a way she never would have expected as recently as one week ago: spectacularly, and inside a skyscraper that she owned.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Molech’s three henchmen were standing right in the middle of the massive lobby, directly on top of the giant gold mustache that was inlaid in the black marble tile. The lobby was silent aside from the timid squeaks of Zoey’s tennis shoes.

  She got as close as she was willing and said, “Hello.”

  They didn’t answer.

  Zoey pulled out her phone and summoned the translucent projection of Will Blackwater, then said, “I hope you don’t mind, Will didn’t trust me to do this on my own.”

  None of the men removed their helmets, each of their expressions hidden behind dark tinted faceplates. But then a face appeared in the visors of all three—the same face on each. The facemasks were screens, each displaying the pale face of Molech, a live feed from his hospital bed.

  On three simultaneous feeds, a chorus of three Molechs said, “Well, well, well, look who brought a pussy to a dick fight. We’re taking a walk.”

  Zoey had been prepared for this, and took a step back toward the front doors when a hand clenched around her arm. That ring of bruises flared up, that throbbing band on her upper arm that rough hands kept latching on to. Zoey bit her lip, and thought of just how very tired she was of all this.

  Molech’s video faces said, “Whoa, where are you goin’? Paulie, walk this ham mannequin over to the elevator.”

  This possibility hadn’t been discussed. From her phone, Will said, “Where are you taking her?”

  No one acknowledged his question. They entered the elevator, and Zoey found she was looking at the street again—the elevators were glassed-in pods that ran up the exterior of the building. One of the men punched a button and Zoey watched with despair as the pavement dropped below them, feeling the ascent in the pit of her stomach—all of the people in the world who could help her were now plummeting below her feet. Up and up they went, all the way up, until the jagged, half-finished city was like a sprawling architect’s model below her, flickering towers jutting up through the haze. She imagined reaching out and just sweeping the buildings aside with her hand. Just … wipe it all away and forget it was ever here.

  The elevator door opened on the top floor and they headed down a hall until they reached a pair of ominous black doors.

  They were locked, but from the phone, Will said, “Should be updated with your voice commands, just say ‘unlock.’”

  She did, and the locks clicked open automatically at the sound. Inside the room was a black granite conference table, etched into the surface of which was the Livingston Enterprises logo done once again in inlaid gold, complete with that stupid cartoon mustache. And that was the least ridiculous feature of the décor.

  Three of the walls formed one big wraparound aquarium full of little two-foot-long sharks (Zoey decided once and for all that subtlety was not Arthur Livingston’s thing). One of the henchmen went up and put his finger on the glass, and one of the sharks came over and started ineffectually biting at it. The remaining wall was a huge curved
window overlooking Tabula Ra$a. Zoey imagined Arthur and his Suits hammering out deals while looking out over the insignificant ants who scurried around the city below. It occurred to Zoey that this was where Will had wanted to meet with her two days earlier, when she had led them all to Squatterville instead. He had wanted to sit her down in this menacing black room in the clouds, surrounded by sharks. The same man she was now trusting with her life, for some reason.

  From the henchmen’s facemasks, the three Molechs said, “Alrighty. Since you’re so big on negotiation, Mr. Blackwater, I figured I’d take us up to the room where Arthur made all of his sleazy backroom deals, dreamin’ up the little loopholes designed to screw over the honest folk like me. So here’s my opening offer, and there’s no fine print. Zoey hands over the gold. Zoey’s mother goes free. I sever Zoey’s spinal cord, paralyzing her, then bury her in a coffin with a camera and ten thousand cockroaches. I broadcast the results on the Tabula Rasa skyline for the next month. I use Raiden tech to rule the Earth forever and ever.”

  The hologram of Will Blackwater said, “Well, I suppose we had to start somewhere. I—”

  “Stop right there, lollicock. I need proof she brought the gold before this goes any further.”

  “Sure. It’s right here.” Will’s hologram pointed at Zoey’s head. “It took us a while to figure it out, but a few months before Arthur died, he got wind that something bad was coming his way. So he made a secret appointment for little Zoey here. She was taken to the doctor, where a series of complicated brain scans were performed. Isn’t that right, Zoey?”