Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits

by David Wong

  “That’s what he wants,” finished Zoey. “To be caught on camera ripping through tanks with his bare hands, to make a demonstration. So he gives everybody plenty of notice so they can all tune in to see it. Gotcha.”

  Budd said, “Then he’ll sit back and wait for the bids to come rollin’ in. Just a big, ol’ infomercial, for his new product line.”

  Andre said, “Plus he’s going to blow up this house, so there’s that. Somebody should probably tell Carlton.”

  Echo said, “The Co-Op isn’t going to sit back and wait for him to come to their door. The Fire Palace will be riddled with bullets by morning, it’s not like that place is a secret any longer.”

  Will said, “You think Molech doesn’t know that? That’s not going to go well.”

  Zoey said, “Well, what’s our plan? Because I was about to suggest paying somebody to go level those buildings myself.”

  Will said, “First, we need to assess what we have to work with. We need to go through the coin, and figure out exactly what we have there.”

  Andre said, “And by ‘we,’ he means Echo will go through it while the rest of us stay far out of her way, occasionally muttering words of encouragement and giving her shoulder rubs.”

  Zoey said, “What difference does the coin make now? None of us have the implants, what good is the software to us?” She looked at Will and said, “Wait, you don’t have the implants, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Like you didn’t get some augmentation that lets you metabolize alcohol faster?”

  Echo said, “The gold drivers are just a small fraction of the data on the coin—the rest is schematics for the devices themselves. There are two petabytes of files on there—fabricator instructions for implants, prototypes, and all sorts of other gear we can’t even identify because most of it isn’t in any kind of human language.”

  “But what good does that do us, considering the workshop where this stuff got built is now a giant black crater?”

  Will had nodded and said, “Exactly. Budd?”

  Budd put on his cowboy hat and said, “I’ll make some calls.” Got to be wearing the hat in the hologram, Zoey figured.

  Will said, “Andre and I will go meet with the hired guns, before they do something stupid. Zoey, you’ll stay here and investigate the house staff.”

  “Who?”

  “Well, you’ve got that theory that somebody on the inside is leaking information, find out who it is. Watch the grounds crew in particular, I saw a guy cleaning the gutters yesterday in a way that was particularly suspicious.”

  “So after your big speech about heroism, you just gave me a clearly made-up job just to keep me safe in the house while the men go out and do hero stuff?”

  Will put on his hat. “That’s not entirely accurate. For one, you’re definitely not safe in this house.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  He shrugged. “You’re the boss.” He turned on his heels and headed out of the room, Andre gave Zoey an “after you” gesture.

  On the way out she asked, “So … what are we doing, exactly?”

  Will said, “The French Drop.”

  FORTY-SIX

  Down in the garage, Will led them to the black panel truck that had delivered the BMW earlier. He tapped a menu on his phone and LED screens on all sides of the vehicle blinked to life, the sides now covered in the dancing animated logo of a cow taking a bite out of a wheel of cheese, the words “UTAH ARTISINAL CHEESES” bouncing overhead.

  Andre said, “Last time we disguised it as an ice cream truck, but it drew a crowd of kids at every intersection.” He opened a side door. The interior contained what looked like a surveillance setup and, at the far end, a wet bar. “There’s a sofa that folds up out of the floor, too—you can’t see it right now because we had to fit the BMW in. After you.”

  The meeting Will had called was being held under a thirty-story-tall naked woman. It was a rectangular building downtown covered in screens displaying a 3D video loop that created an illusion of depth, making it look like the building was a hollow space in which an actual giant stripper was undulating for the passing traffic below (Zoey wondered how many men actually fantasized about three-hundred-foot-tall women, as it just seemed incredibly impractical as far as sexual encounters go). Will told her that inside the building were merely a couple hundred normal-sized strippers and escorts, serving high-end clientele who had to book weeks in advance. Scrolling across the woman were the words “THE NAKED CITY” in flashing crimson.

  Getting into the basement required Will to flash a little golden membership card at the door, after which Andre, Zoey, and then Wu followed him past several giant but well-dressed bouncers. Wu had to give up his katana, as the club apparently had a no-weapons rule. They soon found themselves in an upscale lounge full of black leather furniture, being waited on by girls in tiny French Maid outfits offering sampler platters that included an array of colorful liquids in shot glasses and little glass squares bearing neat lines of white powder.

  An eerie, undulating blue light filled the room from overhead, and Zoey looked up and saw dangling naked legs. The floor above them was apparently full of whirlpool hot tubs with glass bottoms that gave a clear view from the basement lounge, apparently so the people down here could watch. Six hot tubs made up the ceiling of the room they were in, bulging down like a clutch of giant blue alien eggs, each one containing a writhing pair of hairy male legs surrounded by about six female ones. She had said yesterday that Arthur Livingston’s wax corpse was the creepiest thing she had ever seen, but Tabula Ra$a continued to outdo itself.

  They took a seat and Zoey said to Will, “Don’t tell me I own this place.”

  “Okay, I won’t tell you.”

  The open invitation Will had sent out to the Tabula Ra$a security community couldn’t have been simpler: “Don’t move on the Fire and Ice Palace until you hear what we have to say.” A half dozen men soon arrived—and they were all men—representing the largest private security firms in Tabula Ra$a. Will pointed out to her the CEO of the Co-Op, a graying, tanned ex-military man named Blake who Zoey thought probably punished himself with five hundred push-ups if he ever slept past five AM. Gray suit, no tie, smelled of aftershave. Will muttered introductions to her as each man walked in, but she quickly forgot the rest of their names. One of the guys looked like an old-time Mafia don, another was dressed in black tactical gear, like he would prefer to have crashed into the room through a skylight, another guy was barely contained in a sport jacket and tank top due to pectoral muscles tugging at his buttons. There was so much testosterone in the room that Zoey thought she was going to grow five o’clock shadow by the time the meeting ended.

  Will, who was not programmed for preamble, said, “Stay away from the Fire and Ice. All of you. We’re handling it.”

  Zoey thought that bit was, at best, a gross exaggeration.

  Blake’s answer was calm and matter-of-fact. “I appreciate that you needed to say what you just said, as a matter of courtesy. But you and I both know that the issue is only who is going to get to Molech first. Any intel you gained about the interior layout or any, shall we say exotic defensive measures would be greatly appreciated.”

  “‘Exotic’ does not describe what you’re going to find there. We got a man inside only because Molech allowed us to. It was … just a game he was playing.”

  Blake shrugged. “I’m eager to examine his gear after we confiscate it. We’re going in with overwhelming force, Mr. Blackwater.”

  “It will be like a tribe of Zulus trying to ‘overwhelm’ a tank with their spears. He’s had months to prep the building and he has his gear working now. Seeing a glimpse of what he has, I don’t think it will be a fight at all. I think he can just … neutralize you. Whatever you bring.”

  The muscle guy spoke up. “He’s right, Blake, you fellas should back off that. Let my boys roll in and take care of it.”

  Blake said, “You’ll only be in the way. You don’t have
the hardware, Reg.”

  Will said, “We’re going in after Molech ourselves, early tomorrow morning.” This was very much news to Zoey. “If you’re bound and determined to go in, fine, but let us take the first shot. If you think we’re not capable, watch us fail and let it inform your strategy. Maybe we’ll loosen the jar for you, if nothing else.”

  Blake said, “We’ll take it under advis—”

  He was cut off by the sound of screams and gunshots, just outside the door.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Zoey flinched at the sound of the shots, but absolutely no one else in the room did. They just seemed annoyed at the breach of protocol, turning on the door with the disapproval of a theater audience looking to see whose phone had gone off.

  The door was kicked in and Zoey was looking at a red-spiked Mohawk behind a cartoonishly huge gun that she doubted she could even lift—it had at least three barrels, and a chainsaw attached to the bottom. The leader of the League of Badass led his team into the room.

  “Everyone down!”

  No one got down.

  The guy was wearing a camouflage outfit with knee pads, elbow pads, and bafflingly oversized shoulder pads. The rest was a crisscross pattern of straps and bandoliers full of bullets. Everything else was pouches. So many pouches. His boots had pouches on them. Next to him was a pair of fake boobs trying to escape a crimson one-piece bathing suit made of leather, with thigh-high leather boots of the same color. The woman’s boots had holsters that presumably had held the giant handguns she was now brandishing in each fist. If she ran out of bullets, she could resort to the four—no, five—thin daggers that were strapped to various parts of her body. The other four men seemed to be in competition to see who could fit the most pads, blades, and bullets onto their bodies while still remaining ambulatory. Yet none of them had helmets or any other kind of head or eye protection. Zoey figured it wasn’t worth protecting your face if it meant hiding it from the camera.

  The four hustled past the Mohawk and made a beeline for the Suits. A few seconds later, and for the first time in her life, Zoey had a gun pressed to her skull. So did Andre, Will, and Wu. Will sighed.

  The Mohawk said, “Everyone be cool, everything is fine out there. We just had to let ourselves in, that’s all—guess our invitation got lost in the mail. I’m sure you’re all familiar with my team. This here is Vixxxen, behind you are Bonefire, Bloodstick, Stormshaft, and Crankwolf. And they’ve all got itchy trigger fingers.”

  Zoey said, “I guess it’s no surprise they chose this profession, with names like that.”

  Blake, who was still seated and was now in the process of adding sugar to a mug of coffee, said, “Lee, what in the possible hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Andre said, “I think I know what this is about. You guys probably saw the truck out back. I assure you we don’t have any cheese.”

  The Mohawk guy, Lee, said, “We’re saving the city.” He pointed his enormous gunsaw at Blake and the other security execs in the room and said, “Out. All of you.”

  Blake deferred to Will. “That the end of the meeting?”

  “Just remember what I said. Around five AM tomorrow. Don’t move before then.”

  Zoey tried to think of how they would put together a raid on Molech HQ with less than twelve hours to prepare, but she was having trouble focusing due to the gun that was being pressed so hard into her temple that it was making a dent in her thoughts. She wondered if somebody fired a shot into the ceiling if the hot tub up there would burst and drench everyone.

  Blake sipped his coffee and sat down the mug. “I’ll talk to my people.”

  He nodded to everyone in the room, including the gun-wielding members of the League of Badass, and calmly walked out. The rest of the armed security tycoons followed, leaving the hostage situation behind them like a boring sporting event they’d decided to bail on early so they could beat the traffic. On the way out, the muscle guy paused to glance up at a pair of brown, naked legs floating overhead, and Zoey wondered if he wouldn’t just go directly upstairs after this.

  Once the Suits and the League of Badass were alone in the lounge, Lee said, “We’re going after Molech.”

  Zoey said, “Great, go do it. You didn’t have to ask our permission.”

  “You’re coming with us. See, whatever plan those other guys got for getting in the door of Molech’s lair, I’m guessing they didn’t figure out that all they need is something Molech wants. Which is you. We roll up, offering you three on a silver platter, Molech shows his face, we pop him in the head.”

  Andre said, “Where are you going to find a silver platter that big?”

  Will said, “I think there are some important news stories you’ve missed from this afternoon. Popping Molech is a little harder than what you’re picturing in your mind.”

  Lee said, “That’s why you’re going to give us his enhancements. We saw what Armando was doing before he went down.”

  Zoey said, “Wait, aren’t you guy’s on Molech’s side? You turds are the first ones who came after me the day I came into town.”

  “We don’t work for Molech. We work for the people in this city who can’t afford those guys who just left the room. That first night, we didn’t try for that contract because of Molech, we just—”

  “Wanted the publicity?” finished Zoey.

  “Got caught up in the chase. And we didn’t know what kind of man Molech was. But it was never personal.”

  “It’s actually never personal, for the real monsters.”

  “Shut up. You guys cooperate, there’s no reason you can’t live through this. Just play the role of the hostages, we’ll demand to see Molech face to face before we make the exchange, we pop him, roll credits.”

  Wu said, “I assure you that we will be doing you a great favor by not allowing you to go through with that plan.”

  Lee spun on him and said, “Shut up. You’re not in a position to allow anything.”

  Andre said to Lee, “Let me ask you, what was your job before you got into … whatever you call this?”

  “Me? I served in the Marine Corps for four years. After that, five years as the best goddamned bounty hunter in Nevada.”

  Will interjected, “And what are the requirements for becoming a bounty hunter in Nevada?”

  Lee said, “Superior instincts, proficiency in hand-to-hand—”

  “It requires a two-hundred-fifty-dollar application fee and five weekends of classes at a community college.”

  “Yet that was good enough to get the jump on you.”

  Will turned to Zoey and said, “This is good on-the-job training. Tell me, what’s the thing in Lee’s hands there?”

  “It’s uh, a gun? I don’t know the brand or—”

  “And why is a gun better than a knife?”

  Lee said, “Shut up. We’re going out to our van, you’re leading the way.” Will didn’t move.

  Zoey said, “It lets you kill people from a long way away?”

  “Correct. Now look at the men standing next to each of us, and ask yourself why would you ever take such a weapon and press it against a person’s skull, putting it within easy reach of their hands?”

  There was a tussle and a grunt nearby. Zoey spun toward it and found that the man who had been holding Andre at gunpoint was now on his knees, his arm twisted behind his back, his gun in Andre’s hand.

  Lee pointed his gun at him and screamed for him to freeze. But instantly there was another scuffle from Wu’s direction, and by the time Zoey turned her head, Wu was disassembling a pistol he’d yanked away from his captor, letting bullets tumble to the carpet from his fingers. The gunman was unconscious on the floor.

  Will’s captor quickly backed off, getting his gun out of grabbing range but keeping it trained on the back of Will’s skull.

  The man said, “Don’t even think about it,” but sounded like he had never been less confident in a situation in his life.

  Will glanced back at him and said, “You’re T
erry Rizzo, right? Put down that gun, go to your apartment on Lake Street, get Sheldon and Jeremiah, and get out of town. Don’t ever come back. You have five seconds.”

  The man looked nervously at Will, then at Lee.

  Will said, “My men are watching this on Blink. You’d never beat them there. Three. Two…”

  The man hurried out of the room, apologizing to Lee as he went.

  Lee said, “You like to threaten people? Well you can’t threaten me. Molech is about to rain fire on you, and I’m your only—”

  Zoey said, “Shut your idiocy vent. If you want to talk, tell this last guy to stop pointing a gun at my head. I don’t know how to get it away from him, and I don’t want to have to do some big macho thing where Wu comes over here and steals it using his karate powers. Just tell him to put it away, then we’ll converse. I mean, do I have to say out loud what’s already obvious? That shooting me is the same as shooting yourself? I’m getting seriously fed up with all this.”

  Lee studied her for a moment, then gave the slightest nod to her captor. The guy backed off, then joined Lee and Vixxxen on the other side of the room.

  Zoey said, “Okay, two things. First, I think that giving people the ability to punch over buildings is trusting them with quite a bit of power, and in the course of the day today I’ve kind of decided that the whole thing where we grant power based on who wants it most, is probably what has ruined society up to this point. Second, we can’t actually give you what you’re asking. It’s a long story, but we can’t do the limb enhancements, we’re not set up for it.”

  Andre said, “You know she’s tellin’ the truth, too, because otherwise my dong would still be in bandages.”

  “But,” Zoey said, “I can offer you work. The kind of money you probably don’t make in a whole year of bounty hunting. You can buy a new van and Vixxxen here will be able to afford the rest of her costume.”

  Will looked dubious. He muttered, “Zoey…”

  Lee said, “I’m listening.”