by Drew Magary
“Maybe in your hands.”
“What do you think happens after this, you dumb hog? You destroy this family and this company, and then you and my sister live happily ever after? You think you’re gonna change the world? You want the world and you want my sister, but you’re not gonna get either one.”
“I’m gonna get both,” Anna told him. “But first I get to watch you die with a whimper.”
“You got hoodwinked.”
“Shut up.”
He took a deep breath and grew even bigger. He was a skyscraper. His breath rendered the surrounding air unstable at a molecular level. Anna had a gun in her hand and yet she felt as if she were playing defense. All that confidence she had earned over the year was being steadily pulled from her soul.
“You’re being used,” he told her. “When this is all over, it’ll come crashing down on you. You’ll never see Lara again. She won’t give a shit about you, because she never did to begin with. No one cares about you and no one ever has. You’ll be a fugitive and a pariah, and the world will hate you, as it should.”
“Shut up,” Anna said. Her wit wasn’t fast enough to keep up. She was the hottest, messiest mess right now.
“Not so funny anymore, huh? Take that gun and kill yourself,” he said. “Oh wait, I’m sorry. Let me rephrase that. Take that gun and die by suicide, as you so daintily put it.”
“Lara never listened to you and neither will I.”
“Do it. You won’t remember a thing about any of this. You won’t be here. You’ll have ported somewhere new and wonderful and permanent. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”
Her hands were shaking. Hacked. Anna’s mind was toying with her as well, right when she thought she had it well-domesticated. Killing this man should have taken nothing at all. Oh, but Jason Kirsch had a lethal knack for disrupting all that certainty. What would it really be like to destroy PortSys and make the world more chaotic than it already is? Will the rest of the world resent you for it forever? Behold Anna Huff: Queen of the Trolls, a child too stupid to know how childish she was being. An unremarkable girl undone by love, like so many other unremarkable girls and boys. Being dead right now would be a relief, wouldn’t it? No wonder your daddy FUCKING STOP IT RIGHT NOW BRAIN.
She thought about that night she and Sandy opened Sarah’s bedroom door and found her, slumped against her own bed, a gaping hole in her throat. Sarah left no note, nor any clues as to who had been tormenting her. Anna saw the body of her sister and it didn’t feel like it was her sister at all. Sarah was gone already, leaving only a piece of meat behind. That would be Anna’s fate too. One day she would die, and there’d only be a limp mess to remember her by. She should have been dead already.
She could feel her wrist turning the gun on herself. Or was that just her mind fucking with her? This was Jason Kirsch’s uncanny power. He could hijack your brain waves and make his inner voice your own. He’s lying about Dad, or is he? After all, why you do think you like being a dick to people? Where do you think that comes from, Anna?
“You really are good at this,” she admitted.
“Thank you,” he told her. “If I were feeling merciful I’d tell you to take 10 Benadryl and a bottle of Tylenol to make it painless.”
“But you never feel merciful.”
“Never.” In fact, Jason told her, he kept what he called a “living graveyard” for certain victims. It was a five-acre plot of arable land he owned outside of Moroni, Comoros. The plot was surrounded by a brick wall twenty feet high and a smartwall that was so advanced as to be impenetrable. Within these walls, he had workers dig rows of graves and then had them lower a padlocked coffin—each one outfitted with an internal camera and loudspeaker—into every hole. When Jason felt the urge, he would port victims, including the occasional child, into a coffin. His workers would fill the hole, and then he would open up his phone to watch them asphyxiate. Using the loudspeaker, he sometimes cheered them on, although not in terribly good faith, as they desperately attempted to claw their way out. Just scratch a little bit harder. You’ll get out. Your coffin isn’t even underground! Aw man, you look like you're losing steam. Don't give up!
“I had one plot marked out just for you,” Jason told Anna. “But Mother thought it would be more fun to put you through the paces. See if you could escape from our little maze. So I went along with her. And frankly, sometimes I prefer watching people die face-to-face. It’s just not the same over a conference call. Watching your sister die, that was a good one. She knew how to die with flair.”
“How many people have you killed?”
He laughed. “I don’t count, little piggy. It doesn’t matter. You don’t matter.”
“But why do you do this?”
Jason sensed his big moment and went into speech mode. “If you could feel the power I’ve felt, you wouldn’t ask such a naïve and stupid question. You will never know the thrill of exercising total dominion over another human. You see, I get to decide who should live and who should excuse themselves from this earth. My mother and I designed an entirely new stage of humanity. All of the world’s real estate is now our estate. And the reason this is so is because we were bold enough to not pretend to care about others.”
“You didn’t design anything. You stole the recipe from Dr. Stokes.”
“Actually, you stole it from me. And for what? Whiny bitches like you like to think you can change people with your limp compassion. With empathy. The bold ones are the ones who know empathy is a grand lie. You cry and gnash your teeth and go crazy when all the BAD things happen, but really you’re as selfish as anyone else. That’s why your cunt of a big sister is dead. That’s why it was so much fun to watch her die, to see that look in her eye when she realized she wasn’t tough enough to hack it. They always look so surprised to die. I see that surprise in your face right now.”
He took a step toward Anna. She moved back. He took another step, chewing up more available space for her to backtrack.
“Do it,” he commanded.
Remember what Lara said. Staying alive and happy is the best way you can make him miserable.
“No.”
“DO IT!!!!”
Jason charged at Anna. She shut her eyes and fired at him, missing wildly and shattering the porcelain lamp on the nightstand. He tackled her and grabbed her waist, digging his long fingernails into her already tender skin. Then he grabbed her arm and smashed it against the hard walnut bench at the end of the hotel room bed. The gun fell to the floor and Jason straddled her. She struggled to be free but it was no use. He casually swiped the gun off the floor and tucked it into his waistband.
There was a knock on the door to the suite. “You okay, sir?” a burly voice asked from outside. “They’re evacuating the hotel.”
“I’m fine!” Jason Kirsch shouted. He loomed over Anna, a heavy fog. He placed a thick hand to her throat. His hand was so strong, she was aghast; she never realized that she could feel that much pressure bearing down on her larynx.
“I’m gonna kill you,” he told her, smiling. “Then I’m going to find Lara and I’m going cut off her happy little head. It’ll look so perfect mounted on my wall.”
Anna tugged at Jason’s sleeve, frantically trying to tell him one last thing before he sent her into the void. He could sense she was desperate, so he let up for a second. This was the fun part for him.
“You were saying?” he asked her.
Her wit didn’t fail her this time. “Look up.”
Jason Kirsch raised his head just in time to see the silver gleam of an aluminum baseball bat come speeding toward his face. He slumped to the ground: his jaw shattered, his teeth pulverized. Looming in the doorway was a girl with a towering frizz of curly black hair alongside a mountain of a boy.
Asmi held the bat up. “I’ve never swung one of these before,” she told Anna. “I’m mad for it. Hold him up so I can do it again.”
“My dear, you are a natural,�
� Bamert told her.
They helped Anna up as she gasped for air. Jason had choked her so hard, it felt like the sides of her windpipe had been welded together. Now he was curled up on the floor, clutching at his face, the carpet barely muffling his screams. Bamert grabbed the gun and pointed it at Jason’s soggy lump to hold him in check.
Anna grabbed her phone. She was still on the line with Burton.
“Did you get all that on video?” she squeaked.
“Yeah, although you were awfully herky-jerky with the camera.”
“Burton, not now.”
“I can edit the footage. It’ll be on WorldGram within an hour.”
“My goodness,” said Bamert. “Did you hear that, Jason Kirsch? Your confession to manslaughter will be on the Internet within an hour! We get to make the truths this time! The ability to continually shoot video while porting really is a gamechanger. I’ll have to make sure Pegasys incorporates that little technological miracle. Oh, and I’ll definitely have one of my people visit Comoros with a news crew to dig up everyone you buried alive.”
Kirsch was less than pleased. “You fucking pigs!”
“We have to leave, darling,” Asmi said to Anna.
“There’s something I have to finish.” Anna told them. “As long as Jason lives, he can lie.”
“But you can’t.”
Anna looked at Bamert. “Give me the gun.”
“I dare say I shouldn’t,” Bamert told her.
“Give me the gun, and then both of you leave.”
“Anna,” he said soberly, “this isn’t you.”
“It’s about to be. Leave.”
Bamert twirled the gun in his hand and handed it to Anna, butt first.
“Here you go,” said Bamert. “But when we leave, think very hard about whether or not you want to be this sort of person. All right?”
Bamert and Asmi ported out together in a single clap. Whoever was stationed outside Jason Kirsch’s room wasn’t bothered by the noise. Jason Kirsch had always told members of his inner circle, security included, that they were to do nothing without him saying so.
Anna kicked him in his broken face, and then aimed the gun at him. “How do I look to you now, Jason Kirsch? You think I can hack it? You think I can exert total dominion over your sorry ass?”
“No.”
“You don’t look so good yourself, Jason. I don’t think you’d pass my naked test. You know what’s nice about this room is that I already know I won’t come back. I won’t even have to come back to Singapore. There is nothing about this place or this moment that will ever haunt me. I’ll just port out of here and then forget all about it, and about you, because you are the weak.”
“And Lara? What will you tell her, little piggy?”
Anna took out her phone and queued up the pin for Manhattan. She cocked the gun. “I can’t wait to tell Lara what happened to you.”
She was about to open fire when two dozen PINE agents ported into the room, rifles pointed directly at her skull. PINE head Robb Caraway arrived with them, eager to exact vengeance on behalf of an officer of his that got run over in Maine, and on behalf of another officer that Anna had “murdered” in a fit of passion.
“Drop it!” one agent shouted at Anna.
You got too greedy, girl.
She dropped the gun.
“Drop your phone too,” the team leader commanded her.
She took the phone out of the clip and dropped it. A port doctor, one far better than Dr. Fisher, tended to the wounded Jason Kirsch. Emilia Kirsch ported into the room, along with a rigid and angry Dean Vick dragging Lara Kirsch with him. The suite became fully swollen with menace.
“Ah, good,” Emilia Kirsch said to the PINE agents. They were entirely under her control, less human beings than vestigial tentacles that Emilia could use to grab what she needed. She turned her x-ray eyes on her own daughter. “You found Anna Huff. I believe this is the young lady who disguised herself as a PortSys employee and burned down my lab, is that correct? Thank you, Lara dear. Thank you so much for helping us find this terrorist.”
Anna looked at Lara, whose face was still ragged from trauma. Gave her the feline stare. “You told them?”
“I didn’t say a word, I swear.” Lara told her, frightened at Anna’s burgeoning fury. “Emilia is lying to you. Jason pinged them all. They’re gonna kill us both.”
“You know,” said Emilia, “This might be the very first time you’ve made an actual impression on me, Lara. You knew this girl had feelings for you, and you used her to lash out at me and your poor, poor brother. I like that. You might have a future in this company after all.”
“I hate you, Mom,” Lara said quietly.
“Good,” said Emilia. “It’s good to hate. Hate is the primary fuel of ambition. It’s just so sad that you’re still pretending to care about this nothing girl, when you don’t.” She turned to Anna. “I’m sorry, but she doesn’t care about you. She won’t die for you. I barely had to lay a finger on her to get you to give her up.”
“She’s lying!” Lara screamed. As punishment, Vick put her ragged arm in a chicken wing, nearly dislocating her shoulder.
Anna looked into Lara’s green eyes, dying to see the truth. Everything would have been just fine if Anna Huff had just kept all her love and all her anger to herself. If she had just been a quiet, un-intrusive roommate to Lara Kirsch; if she had never jumped off that bridge with her; if they had never made plans for Lily Beach and elsewhere; if she had never told her about Sarah; if she had never resolved to chase Lara once she was gone; if she had tended to her studies and her extracurriculars and not tried to right every wrong and avenge every wronged soul, she could have been all right. She could have survived in this world. She had this love inside her and it felt so real and so good and she wasn’t ready—at all—to reckon with the idea that everyone else found that love to be so disposable. She had doomed herself and she was the only one who couldn’t see it coming a mile away.
“What happens now?” Anna asked Emilia.
“What happens now is that Lara watches you die. I’m afraid that four months locked up in our New York penthouse wasn’t quite enough to give her the edge she needs to compete in this world. So she’ll watch us kill you, and then she’ll watch as we track down your friends and kill them, too. Your friend’s silly Pegasys caper will be stillborn. Dead on delivery. There’s no hope for you, Anna Huff.”
Emilia motioned to a PINE agent. The agent offered Anna a handgun.
“Take that gun,” ordered Emilia, “and shoot yourself. Right now. Do it or we find your mother and kill her in front of you.”
“When you get to hell,” Jason told her, “Say hi to your little bulldog for me. It’s dead now.”
Anna had a gun in her hand, but no matter where she fired it, she would end up dead. Her brain was sputtering; who knew if it remembered how to pull a trigger anyway. Lara was screaming at the agents, all hot wails and smudged blue eyeshadow. Anna put the gun to her own chin, wondering what it would make Lara’s eyes do. Lara stopped screaming and stared at Anna. It was just them now. No Emilia. No Jason. No Vick. No PINE. Just Anna and Lara, locked in each other’s gravitational pull. No place for the truth to hide.
“Lara,” Anna said.
“Yes?”
And then Anna Huff noticed something out of the corner of her eye. It was her phone, on the ground. Still on. She had never ended the video call with Burton. He was still on the line, back in Gould House, frantically mouthing the words STEP FORWARD to her. Charles Vick had loosened his grip on Lara, but was still right behind her, ready to strong-arm her at a moment’s notice like the brainless stooge he was.
It was time to find out if Lara Kirsch was worth loving so much.
“Lara,” said Anna, “This is me, risking it all, asking you to risk it all.”
“What?” asked Lara.
“I’m gonna need you to step forward.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Oh for
god’s sake,” shouted Emilia, “Shoot them both!”
“LARA STEP FORWARD RIGHT NOW!!!!!” Anna screamed.
They stepped forward in tandem and disappeared, leaping together like two girls jumping off a stone bridge and into a midnight river. One second later, a hundred Guardians of Ararat were force-ported, by Burton, into the suite. They were surprised by their new surroundings. None of them had stepped out off of Armenian soil in their respective lifetimes. But they were all conveniently armed with now-standard carbon fiber rifles that each weighed under three kilograms. And they were quite pleased, at long last, to encounter Emilia and Jason Kirsch in person.
SEWELL HALL
Lara and Anna reappeared in the tiny inner bedroom of Room 24. It was, against all odds, unoccupied by a new student. A girl named Aubrey Jackson took Anna’s place at school for second semester (Anna had been put up in absentia and expelled in a tidy five minutes), but got booted in mid-March for snorting cocaine off a classroom table. It was too deep into the school year to replace Aubrey with a fifth occupant. This room, other Sewell girls whispered, was now cursed. Anna and Lara sat on the bare mattress, staring at the yellowed walls while Asmi and Bamert covered them with blankets and handed them fresh water to drink.
“Do either of you need a doctor?” he asked the two of them.
“No,” they said in unison.
“Hey,” Lara said, looking around, “This is my room.”
“Actually,” said Bamert, “This is now Anna’s room.”
“Yeah I took it over so I could whip up some meth, remember?” Anna joked.
“It’s no one’s room,” said Asmi.
“Maybe it oughtta be my room,” said Bamert, cocking an eyebrow toward Asmi. “I could use new sleeping quarters.” Asmi blushed.
“Anything is better than being stuck in that apartment,” Lara told them. She suddenly freaked out. “Emilia and Jason are still at the hotel! They’re gonna find us!”