Hench

  Everything.

  “It will scale,” he said to himself, so low I almost missed it. “I am sure of it.”

  My lips parted in shock. I wanted to scream at him, to throw my cane across the room. I hadn’t predicted this. I thought once we took out Supercollider, it meant we could theoretically take out anyone. To Leviathan, it meant we could take out everyone.

  We are still rebuilding, I shrieked in my head. This could do so much harm; even if the math worked out, we were already covered in so much blood. Look at the cost, I wanted to scream. Look at what it cost us.

  But that’s not what I said.

  I looked at the screen, feeling the engine of my brain warming up and humming. My hand reached for his but I didn’t quite touch him.

  “I’ll run the numbers.”

  Acknowledgments

  I’M INCREDIBLY LUCKY. I know that’s a thing people say fairly often when giving speeches or talking about their lovely wife and kids or whatever, but I mean it differently. I’m lucky like a cockroach is lucky: irritatingly resilient, and if you see one there’s an army of them in the walls somewhere. I realize I’ve just called my friends, colleagues, and loved ones cockroaches, which gives you an idea of how good I am at feelings, but what I am trying to get at is that I am surrounded by an entire community of hilarious geniuses without whom I would not have been able to accomplish a damn thing.

  Thanks to Ron Eckel, my agent, who put an incredible amount of faith in me when I was a freelancer gleefully making enemies on the internet. He and his team at CookeMcDermid took such good care of me, I am still in awe of it. He has been my champion from the first and having someone on my team and in my corner the way he has been is invaluable.

  Thanks to my editor, David Pomerico, who grokked what I was hoping to do immediately and became a crucial ally. Because of his input, and because he believed in it, this book is dramatically better, and I am profoundly grateful for the trust he placed in me.

  Thanks to my team at HarperCollins. Taking a manuscript and making a book out of it still feels like an act of genuine magic to me. I was fortunate enough to work with a team of actual wizards, and am deeply grateful for all their expertise, enthusiasm, and kindness.

  Thanks to Professor Ilan Noy, whose work on measuring the impact of natural disasters was incredibly influential for me (and the Auditor), and who graciously allowed me to quote him in this book.

  Thanks to everyone who read early drafts of Hench and offered invaluable input, criticism, and encouragement, especially Jonathan Ball, Nicolas Carrier, Izzie Colpitts-Campbell, J. Dymphna Coy, Heather Cromarty, Chris Dart, Trista Devries, Stacey May Fowles, Haritha Gnanaratna, Christopher Gramlich (who taught me about blood transfusions), Ryan Hughes, Rachel Kahn (who drew Anna for the first time), Max Lander, Jennifer Ouellette, Erin Rodgers, William Neil Scott, Mariko Tamaki, Audra Williams, and Jennie Worden. They were my cheering section for literal years and their support, love, and friendship mean the world.

  Thanks to the Cecil Street Irregulars: Madeline Ashby, Jill Lum, David Nickle, Michael Skeet, Hugh Spencer, and Alan Weiss, and the late Sara Simmons and Helen Rykens. Their input and guidance from the very first drafts were crucial, and being able to tap into their collective talent and wisdom has been transformative.

  Thanks to all of my friends, who have kept me in one piece and have brought joy to existing on this blasted hellscape of an earth. Every time I have made one of you laugh, a little devil earned its wings. If you think you recognize a flattering depiction of yourself in this book, you’re probably right. If you recognize an unflattering one, you’re definitely right.

  Thanks to my parents, Harry and Margaret (who are endlessly proud of everything I do), and my brother, Michael, and sister-in-law, Kacy (who are more brilliant and kind than humans have any right to be).

  Above all, thanks to my partner, Jairus Khan, without whom this book would never have been finished. He built me custom word counters and disaster math spreadsheets, helped me through every plot hole and problem, and unfailingly, unwaveringly believed in me. There is no part of this book, as there is no part of my life, that isn’t better for him having touched it. I used to feel lucky because I lived; now I feel lucky because he loves me.

  About the Author

  NATALIE ZINA WALSCHOTS is a writer and game designer whose work includes LARP scripts, heavy metal music journalism, video game lore, and weirder things classified as “interactive experiences.” Her writing for the interactive adventure The Aluminum Cat won an IndieCade award, and her poetic exploration of the notes engine in Bloodborne was featured in Kotaku and First Person Scholar. She is (unfortunately) the author of two books of poetry: Thumbscrews, which won the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, and DOOM: Love Poems for Supervillains. Natalie sits on the board of Dames Making Games, a space for queer and gender-marginalized people to create games freely, where she hosts interactive narrative workshops. She plays a lot of D&D, participates in a lot of Nordic LARPs, watches a lot of horror movies, and reads a lot of speculative fiction. She lives in Toronto with her partner and five cats. This is, arguably, too many cats.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  Copyright

  Excerpt in Chapter 2 from Ilan Noy © VoxEU

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  HENCH. Copyright © 2020 by Natalie Zina Walschots. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Cover design by Yeon Kim

  Cover image © Chipmunk 131/Shutterstock (silhouette)

  ILLUSTRATIONS: book title lettering, mask (title page frontis), and background art (title page) © Shutterstock

  FIRST EDITION

  Digital Edition SEPTEMBER 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-297859-2

  Version 08142020

  Print ISBN: 978-0-06-297857-8 (hardcover)

  Print ISBN: 978-0-06-304038-0 (international edition)

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  * Noy, Ilan. “A DALY Measure of the Direct Impact of Natural Disasters.” VOX, CEPR Policy Portal. VOX, March 13, 2015. https://voxeu.org/article/daly-measure-direct-impa
ct-natural-disasters.