by David Wong
“So? Good riddance.”
“Here’s the thing—I had told Armando the story, when they were doing my outfit. Could he have picked up the phone and ordered something like that done?”
“No. Armando didn’t have those kind of connections. That wasn’t the business he was in.”
“Yeah, I didn’t think so.”
“I wouldn’t think about it anymore. See, there’s a guy who deserves to be forgotten.”
“You were in the room when I told that story, weren’t you?”
“You should try to get some rest. You’ll need to be sharp to pull this off tomorrow.”
“And where Armando couldn’t pick up the phone and get somebody strangled in a jail cell and then have it faked to look like a hanging, you could.”
“As I said, as far as I can see, it’s just another rotbrain doing the world a favor by taking himself out. Nothing more.”
“And you promise me that’s what it was. If you tell me now you didn’t have him killed, I’ll believe you.”
“I think,” said Will, pausing to choose his words, “that he made the decision to die. And he made that decision the moment he decided to touch Arthur Livingston’s daughter.”
Zoey covered her eyes with the blanket—something she used to do as a little kid. “Oh my god. Why? Why would you do that?”
“If Arthur had heard about that incident back when it happened, Jezza Lewis would not have woken up to see another sunrise. Just collecting on an overdue bill, as far as I see it.”
“You people live on a different planet. I keep having to remind myself of that. Lives just mean nothing to you.”
Will let silence hang in the room for a minute, then crossed his arms and let out a breath.
“My wife. She … she was killed. Three years ago. Organized gang of thieves, robbed a high-end jewelry store on Lattice Drive. Private security chased them. My wife was just a passerby, walking across an intersection, pure coincidence. The pursuit blew through and one of the vehicles smashed right into her. Don’t even know if it was one of the good guys or bad guys and I’ve never tried to find out.”
“I’m sorry.”
“This city … it’s like that. The people are just background, props in somebody else’s adventure. And that’s all my wife was, to them. A thud and a dent in their fender, a forgotten moment in somebody else’s thrilling car chase. That’s the way it is here and it’s always getting worse. And that can’t be allowed to continue.”
“So that’s why you’re so big on taking down Molech?”
“It’s bigger than that. You know what Tabula Rasa means, right? The words?”
“Clean slate? Isn’t that it?”
“I’m not going to bore you with the history, but Arthur and the other investors who snapped up all this land—they’d kind of gotten run out of Las Vegas due to … some unscrupulous practices. So the idea was they’d just start their own Vegas, the way it used to be, back when it was Sin City and not just Disneyland for the elderly. Utah had this crazy Libertarian governor at the time—anyway, the point is ‘clean slate’ to them just meant ‘no rules.’ But Korea changed Arthur. Tabula Rasa, that phrase started to mean something different to him. He wanted it to be a clean slate, for everybody. A city that actually works. Jobs, clean air, no bureaucrats…”
“It sounds like the kind of idea a little kid would have.”
“Arthur was … naïve, in his own way. And he was too late—even in those early days, organized crime had moved in, getting in on the ground floor. They had set up shop before the first McDonald’s, the gangs and the black markets and human traffickers.”
“The Arthur Livingstons, in other words.”
“Exactly. So I think all of this, the whole project with Raiden and this stupid dream about super powers, he thought what so many guys like him had thought—that with enough money and technology you could smooth out the flaws in society like ironing the wrinkles out of a shirt. Stamp out the crime like a comic book superhero and turn this place into a utopia. But you know it doesn’t work that way.”
“No. Because the bad guys are just as motivated to keep things like they are.”
“Probably more so. But maybe I’m naïve, too, because I can’t shake the idea that the whole world is watching us. When they broke ground out here, they called it the city of the future, like Tabula Rasa really is a preview of what the world is going to look like, and everybody’s just waiting to see which way it goes.”
“That’s a lot of pressure.”
“It’s the burden we took on. That you took on.”
“When I inherited all the money?”
“When you were born. Get some sleep.”
FIFTY-FIVE
Zoey managed four hours. When she woke up it was the morning of Tuesday, December 21—the shortest day, before the longest night. Her toiletbot played the news for her and every feed was covering another aspect of the same story. From various man-in-the-street interviews it became clear that the people of Tabula Ra$a fell into roughly three camps in response to the terror threat:
A. Those who were evacuating (enough to choke the highway leading out of town).
B. Those who were out and about, camera ready, hoping to catch some of the action.
C. Those who were just going about their day as normal, because the city was the city and the threat of exotic violence didn’t mean they could take a day off work.
One thing was for sure: for the private security firms in the city, this was Black Friday. The Co-Op was spread thin, every single customer presumably having demanded extra protection. They had even ditched their black ties and overcoats for black tactical gear (though Zoey figured they could still have had their ties on underneath) and every bank, casino, and other high-dollar target had a dozen of them at their door. But the biggest show of force was at the Co-Op headquarters itself—ranks of men and terrifying black vehicles, figuring that letting their own office get leveled would surely be bad for business.
To Zoey, it didn’t look like nearly enough.
The most alarming scene, though, was the two houses of worship. Volunteers had turned out by the hundreds, supplementing armed contractors they’d pooled their money to hire. That struck Zoey as madness, not because she wasn’t religious, but because she knew those buildings could be put back together inside of a week, with the technology she saw around the city. Let Molech grind them to dust, who cares? God and Allah can stay in a hotel for a couple of weeks if they have to. But, she supposed, that was easy for her to say.
She went to get dressed, and found she had worked her way back around to the same jeans, Awesome Possum T-shirt, and cardigan that she’d arrived in six days ago, though at least they had been washed. She imagined the coroner examining her body later tonight and also noting that she had died in a pair of red panties that said “SHARK WEEK” across the front, with a cartoon Great White on the butt.
Carlton was already in the kitchen when she passed, ready to launch into breakfast. She asked him if he just waited there all night, but he said he had set Candi to alert him when someone else in the house was up and around, in case they needed anything. Zoey thought this sounded like a form of slavery but Carlton seemed to take pride in having thought of it, and asked her what she wanted.
“Well, it could be my final meal … what’s the best thing you make? What was Arthur’s favorite? Make that.”
Carlton busied himself making what appeared to be some kind of elaborate hamburger, while at the same time dropping parts of a whole boiled chicken, egg yolks, and various other disgusting ingredients into a hand-cranked meat grinder that turned out a horrific-looking substance that Stench Machine pounced on with a fervor Zoey had never seen in the animal. Carlton had clearly been educating himself on fine cat food recipes. The burger turned out to be a seared beef patty topped with onion jam, bacon, and a peanut butter sauce, all on a bun of fried dough encrusted with potato chip crumbs. Zoey felt like it was the type of thing a person should be ar
rested for eating, and consuming such an obscenity at breakfast would surely keep her out of Heaven later today. It was worth it.
Soon Zoey was heading toward the ballroom, espresso in hand, and arrived in a room that was eerily silent, smelling of fresh paint, cookies, and burned chemicals. For the moment she had Santa’s Workshop to herself, the giant gadget-defecating caterpillar sleeping silently in the center of the room. Zoey sipped her coffee and wandered over to the holographic displays that were showing an endless list of objects with indecipherable names. The text looked Russian to Zoey, with its backward R’s and such, but Will actually knew how to read Russian, for some reason, and told her the menus were still mostly nonsense and made-up words (the labels roughly translated to things like “Particlefrack Vapinator”).
She flicked through the menu, hundreds of items, each representing a gadget. She swiped down and down through the list, until the screen stopped when it reached the bottom.
The very last schematic on the indecipherable list was simply called: ZOEY.
Her coffee cup stopped halfway to her mouth.
Was this new? It was literally the only English word on the whole list. Had Echo seen it? Or Will? Why hadn’t they mentioned it?
From behind her, Wu said, “There you are. We need to go over the escape plan.”
“Escape plan?”
“If everything fails, the final branch of the plan—Plan Z, we will call it—is I get you in a vehicle and drive you as far away from here as possible.”
“How about we just make sure it doesn’t come to that?”
“We are not gods. We do not control the universe. All we can do is be ready for what it brings us. Come with me.”
They descended into the garage, where they found the armored sedan pointed at the door. The blue BMW escape car Budd had bought was now parked off in a corner, forgotten. Probably a hundred-thousand-dollar car, but they’d decided they didn’t need it, so it gets discarded like a cheap toy. Insane.
Wu said, “Get in.”
“I don’t get what it is we need to practice here. If everything goes to hell, you’ll grab me and we’ll get in the car and go.”
“You cannot assume I will still be available, or alive, to facilitate your escape. You need to know how to initiate the vehicle’s emergency protocols. And we cannot assume you’ll figure it out on the fly, when for all we know at that moment the mansion will be in flames and collapsing around you.”
“Jesus, Wu.”
“Zoey, regardless of what happens, you cannot be surprised. Men like me and Will who have a war background know something about the world that you do not. In those moments of chaos, everything you thought you could depend on falls away. Everything turns upside down. Heroes turn out to be cowards, and vice versa. Your best-laid plan fails, your most haphazard improvisation saves your life. Friends turn out to be enemies. In the end, Zoey, you can trust nothing. You can only have another plan ready to go. One after another. Get in.”
Zoey slid into the driver’s seat. The dash and windshield display lit up.
“All right. So is there a voice command, or—”
The door slammed closed on its own.
The garage door began rolling upward.
Zoey assumed she’d said something or hit a button. She took her hands off the wheel and glanced around the dash.
“Uh … cancel. Stop. Stop doing what you’re doing, car.”
Instead, the car lurched forward, tires squealing, flying toward the still-opening door.
“Stop! Hey! STOP!”
The door hadn’t cleared enough room for the car to pass, but the armored sedan wasn’t going to wait—it ran through it, the rising door scraping the roof as it passed. The second door was completely closed. No matter—the armored sedan bashed through it, chunks of debris piled on the hood as it flew out and down the back drive.
“Hey! Stop! Car! Stop driving! Park! Brake! Engine off! STOOOPPPP!!!”
The car did not respond. Zoey grabbed the steering wheel, and hit the brake—doing either should have automatically returned control to her. It did not.
The car pulled itself into traffic, weaving in and out of morning commuters, professionals from Beaver Heights who were sipping tea and applying makeup on their way to the offices downtown for yet another Tuesday. And then they were into the suburbs, whipping past the churches and family restaurants and weed dispensaries. And Zoey suddenly knew where they were going.
And she began to panic.
She tried to scream for help, pleading for another commuter to block the sedan’s path, or run it off the road. But cars were remarkably soundproof these days, each driver in a bubble that seals out the outside world, people playing music or listening to soft-spoken public radio shows, commuters worried about parking and office politics and trying to remember if they had wheeled the trash out to the curb. The comforting little concerns that let us blot out the big things. No idea that they were two feet away from a young woman slapping her window and mouthing wordless cries, trying to get their attention.
They were through the suburbs now, heading into the city. Zoey desperately reared back with both feet and kicked at the driver’s-side window. The glass bounced and flexed but held. This was glass intended to withstand an antitank rocket, it would be an all-day task even if she had power tools. And yet she still tried, because this was her life. She kicked the passenger side; she kicked the windshield. Who knows, maybe one piece of glass had a minute manufacturing flaw, or an invisible crack. Maybe it would trip some alarm in the auto drive, and cause the car to stop, or deviate from the course.
It did not.
As the buildings of downtown rose into view, she saw the ominous black countdown on the skyline. She punched the dash, smashing the glass panel readouts and maps and rearview monitors, hoping to damage some crucial component that would make the car stop short of its destination, anywhere other than Molech’s renovated hotel. The armored sedan smoothly hummed along despite its wounds, just as its designers had built it to do. They had done their job well—her little bubble of panic bobbed along in the sea of indifference that was Fairfax Avenue.
The twin black-clad pillars grew in the windshield. Zoey screamed, and cried, and ripped the plastic inner panel from the driver’s-side door, finding only solid metal underneath. The car slowed and placidly reached the Fire Palace, turning down a ramp leading to a heavy steel door. It rolled open as she approached—they were, of course, expecting her. By the time the car rolled to a stop, the inside of the driver’s-side window was a pink smear of blood from Zoey’s fists. When the door was yanked open, Zoey was cradling her hands, having turned her knuckles into hamburger trying to punch her way out.
Leaning into the door was Molech, wearing the ridiculous supervillain costume he’d probably paid six figures to have designed (a black costume that had been cut to leave most of his torso exposed, featuring cobalt highlights and a huge, bright blue codpiece), and the sidekick he’d named Black Scott.
Molech looked skeptical. “I’ll be damned. He wasn’t lying. Get her out.”
Scott reached in, and Zoey pushed herself backward, kicking at the reaching hands, pressing herself up against the passenger-side door. Then that door was yanked open and she tumbled out onto the oil-stained concrete. Someone laughed.
A boot pushed her to the floor. Her arms were pulled behind her back and she felt something metal go around her wrists.
Molech circled the car, looked down at her, and said, “This here is what happens when you put blind trust in people. You Livingston crew, you let traitors continue in your midst. See, organizations, just like men, are subject to natural selection. If your organization is vulnerable to infections of disloyalty, it’ll die.”
From the floor, Zoey choked out the word “Who?”
“Doesn’t matter now, does it?” To someone standing nearby, Molech said, “She got implants? Anything inside her she’s about to spring on us?”
The bearded man who had examined Armand
o’s body the day he died—who Molech had called “Doc”—leaned over Zoey.
He studied a gadget in his hand and said, “No, she’s clean. Or she’s unmodified, anyway.”
Molech shook his head.
“I don’t like it.”
Scott said, “Seem too easy?”
“Yeah. Our man sneaking around inside the estate, rerouting the car … they had to know.”
Scott said, “Damn, man, she’s a hell of an actress if so.”
Zoey rolled over, and tried to sit up. Her hands were bound with some kind of wire, but it felt loose. If she could just get one hand free …
Molech said, “No, they wouldn’t let her in on it.”
“Well … maybe she’s got, like, a bug or tracking device on her that we can’t detect? Somethin’ new?”
Doc interjected, “It would still have to send a signal back. This building is a dead zone, we’re jamming everything.”
Molech said, “And she don’t have a tiny bomb up her butthole?”
Doc just shrugged, making it clear that if there had been, he would have mentioned it long before now.
Molech said, “Maybe just to be sure, we ought to reach in there with a fishhook. Pull her guts out her ass, turn her inside out.”
Scott said, “Man, it’s past time to go, if we’re gonna get set up to coordinate with the countdown. Just stomp her head in and get it over with.”
“She might know somethin’, even if she don’t know she knows it.”
“Then stick her in the cage and let Doc work on her while we’re gone. Let him reconnect some nerves, turn her own body into a torture chamber.”
“Yeah, let’s do that. Wait—no. No…” Molech squinted again, the expression he apparently made when the gears in his head were turning. “No, that’s what they’d expect me to do. Whatever plan they got, it’s based on getting her inside my HQ, then us leavin’ her alone here. I bet that’s the whole point.”
Scott was getting impatient. “Man, you can sit here and second guess yourself all day. Fact, I bet that’s what they want most of all. You pacing around and worrying about her instead of keepin’ your eyes on the prize.”