by Eliot Peper
“You said Javier has already played his hand. What about you? Do you have any cards left?”
Diana just looked at her.
“What?” asked Emily.
Diana quirked her mouth into a lopsided smile.
“Me,” said Emily.
“Who are you?” Diana waggled her fingers and spoke the words with a theatrical flourish.
Emily started.
“Dag gave me root access to his feed way back when he was trying to figure out how exactly you were mindfucking him. So I got to see the message you left him in Room 412. Just the right kind of sphinxlike question to send someone down the rabbit hole of existential paranoia, only to discover how justified that paranoia really was. It reminded me of all the games they had us play back on the Farm during training. They felt petty to us high-minded rookies, but eventually you realize that parlor games are great training for real-world espionage precisely because real-world espionage is just a giant parlor game. You would have loved it.”
A glowing log crumbled to embers with a gust of sparks. The heat beat against them in waves. It was a pyre. Humans downed trees for the simple pleasure of burning their corpses. Every hearth was a place of sacrifice.
“Is that what this is to you?” asked Emily. “A game?”
“And that,” said Diana with a wink, “is why you would have passed every test but failed out of the Farm. The agency was big on patriotism and institutional loyalty. But they discouraged personal loyalty at all costs. It fucked me up for a long time. I could cultivate assets like a mofo, but couldn’t build a real friendship for the life of me. When relationships become tools, your humanity starts to leak away. I’ve tried to relearn it with Dag and the twins. How to be myself. How to be open. How to be vulnerable.” Diana sighed. “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and I still suck at it. You, though. You take things seriously. You take people seriously. You’re a manipulative bitch of the first order, and yet you have real friends to whom you’re truly loyal. I mean, you violated your promises to them once, and it broke you. Wherever you’ve been . . .” Diana nodded to indicate Emily’s scars. “Let’s just say I’m not going to be asking you for holiday recommendations.”
Emily touched the yellowing bruises at her neck self-consciously. “What exactly are you asking me for? Why are we here?”
Diana bit her lip. “Has Lowell made you?”
Sex, violence—all you need is drugs and rock and roll, and you’ve got the whole package, Pixie. “I . . . I don’t know,” said Emily. “I’m fairly certain we crossed paths accidentally. He wouldn’t have wanted me to be able to ID his collaborators or overhear their plans if he knew who I really was.” She remembered the singing cicadas, the sodden sheets, the thick funk of sex. “I guess it’s possible the whole thing was engineered for my benefit—you yourself have pulled off some elaborate ruses—but I don’t see a payoff that’d be worth the risk.” The false courier leered at her from behind the curtain of flame, cleaver still lodged in his neck. “The kidnappers would have no way to recognize me, so that’s probably a low-risk vector. To a certain extent, it depends how much effort we assume Lowell’s expending. If he has goons poking through my apartment, they’ll notice I’m not there, which could lead to more questions with more difficult answers.” Decision trees grew in her mind, branches forking through probability space. “On balance, I’d guess no.”
Diana nodded, and Emily could sense the hunger just below the surface. “Do you have a way back in?”
I’m hosting a party next week up in the mountains. I can have a plane pick you up on Camiguin. What’ll it take to convince you to come?
“I do,” said Emily reluctantly.
“Look.” Diana spread her hands. “I don’t know what your plans are. Hell, we met for the first time yesterday. Speaking as a person who prides herself on her ability to sniff out secrets, I must say you did a bang-up job on the disappearing act way back when. And if we are to believe the story you’re selling, you came out of hiding for one reason: to protect your friends.” She rubbed Phil’s head with her knuckles. “So maybe you’re hoping to pull the same trick and vanish again. But I can tell you one thing for sure, Lowell’s not gonna stop just because you screwed up a kidnapping. He’s the kind of guy who always has contingencies, always finds new angles. So if you really want to protect your friends, and if you want to give Javier the kind of boost he so desperately needs to make good on his pet project, then you’ll go back in and get us what we need to bring Lowell down.”
Knowing people better than they knew themselves had once been Emily’s forte.
“You’re pitching me,” she said.
“And you’re gonna say yes, baby,” said Diana. “Am I right or am I right?”
CHAPTER 25
Emily caught a glimpse of herself in the greenroom’s cracked mirror. Although her aching body was a testament, it was hard to believe it had only been a few days since she fought Niko. It was here that she’d prepared for the fight. It was here that’d she huddled in its aftermath. After accepting Lowell’s invitation, it was to here that she’d returned in order to keep up appearances.
Excellent. You will not be disappointed. Be at the airport at 7 p.m. local time the day after tomorrow. Come as you were.
Tearing her eyes away from the smudged glass, Emily continued to pack up her glitter, makeup, and body paint. She had already dropped by the apartment to pick up an extra leotard. Nothing had appeared out of place, though she hadn’t made a habit of setting traps for intruders. In fact, she herself had felt like an intruder. A tourist visiting a scene from someone else’s life.
The door opened behind her, and she saw Rizal’s shocked face in the mirror. Damn. She’d been hoping to slip in and out without running into him.
“Pixie—” he said. “I—You’re okay. Where have you—”
Yet more demands for impossible explanations. What drugs would he think she was on if she actually told him what had happened over the past few days?
“Hi, Riz.” She tried an apologetic smile, remembered the berserk roar of the crowd. “Sorry I went dark. Niko really threw me for a loop, you know?”
He grimaced and shook his head.
“I get it,” he said. “Sometimes it’s just another fight, and sometimes it gets inside your head. Doesn’t matter how many times you do it or how jaded you think you get. Demons are vermin. They don’t try to breach your walls, they live inside them.” He took a tentative step into the room. “Look, Pixie, that’s why I’ve been on your ass to consider getting out of the game. It’s silly, I know. What’s more stupid than trying to convince your most consistent fighter to retire? But you’ve done me good, and I’m gonna return it in kind even if you don’t listen. Niko was your eleventh. One of these days you’re going to be the one leaving in a body bag.”
That’s the plan. She almost said it out loud but caught herself just in time. Death wishes weren’t things to broadcast to the world. And was it even still true? So many unbelievable things had happened in the past few days—was it possible that the story she’d been telling herself all along was wrong? Did the future contain a place for her after all, or was an unmarked grave the best she could hope for?
“Hold on,” said Rizal, frowning. “Are you packing your things? What’s going on?”
Emily turned on the stool to face him. Even when she stopped, the room kept spinning. For a Copernican moment, she imagined that she was in fact still, and the planet itself had inexplicably begun to rotate on a new axis. Rizal could never understand Pixie because he didn’t know Emily. Javier, Rosa, and the rest could never understand Emily because they didn’t know Pixie. She had transformed herself into Janus, but didn’t know what it meant to be two people, to live two lives both impoverished and enriched by each other, to bridge the gap opening in her soul.
“I’m going away for a while,” she said, willing the room to stop spinning. “I’m not sure when I’ll be back, but it shouldn’t be too long.”
> Rizal raised his palms in a placating gesture. “Pixie, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to come on too strong. I’m not trying to tell you what to do. I’m just trying to be a good friend. I hope I’m not scaring you off to find a new club to fight in.”
Emily swallowed. Ever since they’d met, she’d pushed Rizal away, kept their relationship to the bare professional minimum. Yet he’d made the extra effort to train her up despite her age and inexperience. He’d given her a chance in the ring when other owners would have scoffed. He’d nursed her back to health after narrow victories and even offered to make her a partner in the club itself, offering her a way out that few fighters could even dream of. Whether or not she admitted it, he had proven himself to be a truer friend than she deserved.
She crossed the distance between them in two quick strides and wrapped him in a tight hug. When relationships become tools, your humanity starts to leak away. He tensed, then patted her uncertainly on the back. He smelled of sweat and the vinegar solution he used to wipe down the bar.
“Riz,” she said into his armpit, “I don’t say this enough, but thanks for everything you’ve done for me.”
“Okaaay,” he said gruffly. “Now I’m really worried about you.”
She pulled away and sucker punched him on the shoulder.
“Don’t be,” she said. “I’ve got some business to take care of. After that . . . Well, I dunno, but I’ll be in touch.”
He scratched his chin. “You’ve always got a place here, you know. I wasn’t kidding about helping to run this joint. With this offer on the club, we’ll have more cash on hand. Nothing would please me more than having a manager who can tell the difference between an invoice and their own asshole.”
Emily scooped up her bag.
“Thanks,” she said. “But I’m not your gal. I find my own asshole endlessly fascinating.”
He snorted, and she threw him a salute as she left the greenroom.
Emily kicked up fresh sawdust as she walked through the club proper. It felt small and banal without the crowd. The empty ring, locus of so much blood and glory, just looked sad and lonely. The bar was scuffed but clean. She wondered whether Analog’s bouncers had ever had to dispose of a body like their equivalents here on Camiguin. Maybe some of what had drawn her to Rizal was how honest he was about dishonesty. The fight club was a black-market institution, but he ran it in an honorable way. If Emily had learned anything growing up, it was that the only true honor to be found was among thieves. Everyone else could safely pay it lip service while taking advantage of every loophole they could squeeze through.
She knelt, scooped up a handful of sawdust, and blew it into the air, watching the particles whirl and settle like so many galaxies. Then Emily rose to her feet, opened the door, and climbed the steps into the sweltering heat of a Camiguin afternoon.
CHAPTER 26
Emily finished applying her makeup on the helicopter. Run-DMC oonce-oonced in her feed, drowning out the roar of the rotors. What would she really find at the end of this journey? How would she wring the information they needed from Lowell? Was this stupid, brave, both, neither? Would she ever see Rosa or Javier again? If she did, how could she reengage in their lives without hurting them again? She had run away to protect them from herself but, in running, had done them a deeper violence.
Just like when she was preparing for the ring, Emily poured all her fears into the fractals she was drawing on her skin. They seemed to grow of their own accord, these runes born of anxiety. They spiraled up her forearms, wrapped themselves around her chest, and turned her entire body into a glittering mural of primary colors. As she worked, time and space and thought all slid together to become a single flow state that moved beyond consciousness into pure existence.
Finally, she cocked her head at the travel vanity.
Emily closed her eyes, and Pixie opened them.
Perfect.
Packing away her things, she turned her attention to the world beyond the cockpit’s soap-bubble canopy. The Sawtooth Mountains rose below, snowcapped peaks reaching for the impossibly blue dome of sky. Jagged ridges surrounded the natural amphitheaters of glacier-cut cirques and brilliant aquamarine lakes polka-dotted the pine-covered slopes. The epic geography called to mind the implacable machinations of vast tectonic plates beneath the planet’s skin, the invisible forces shaping the very land unwary animals walked. Like stargazing, apprehending such vast wilderness defied the limited container of the human mind, leaving Emily awestruck even as she considered the very real dangers that awaited her.
Surely, this was precisely the effect Lowell intended. Natural splendor would lend gravity to his hustling, and a sense of wonder could be molded into its opposite, self-importance. When you made it your business to manipulate world affairs, you needed an impressive place to host the power brokers you hoped to woo.
The sun dipped below the western horizon, painting the clouds purple and the snowfields gold. Summoning her courage and her feed, Emily killed the music and made a call. This made her more nervous than the mission itself, but she couldn’t keep running away forever. Two faces materialized in front of her.
“You caught us prepping dinner,” said Javier.
“Holy crap!” said Rosa. “Is that a mask?”
Emily grinned. “You like?”
“Um . . . striking,” said Javier.
“It’s a costume party,” said Emily. “This is part of my ensemble.”
“It must be quite an ensemble,” said Rosa.
“I expect it to be quite a party, knowing Lowell,” said Emily.
“Maybe we can host an exhibition in Addis when this is over,” said Rosa. “You can be the star.” The words were lighthearted, but her tone was taut.
“I’ll be okay, sweetheart,” said Emily, trying to imbue her own words with a confidence she didn’t entirely feel.
“Look,” said Javier, all business. “I’m still not comfortable with this. Diana didn’t consult me on the operation before suggesting it. She’s good at convincing people to do dangerous things. But it’s not too late to call it off.”
“She didn’t consult you because she knew you’d say no,” said Emily. “And I’m pretty good at convincing people to do dangerous things too. Diana’s a force I can reckon with just fine, thank you.”
“Em,” said Rosa. “I know you’re trying to help. But is this truly necessary?”
“I’m pretty sure I can handle a bunch of weirdos drinking fancy cocktails,” said Emily. “And Diana already has an extraction team in place just in case I need backup. Lowell is a motherfucker. I don’t want him running wild with you in his sights, and I’m the person with the best chance of scoring inside intel on his plan B. If we don’t get his cabal under control, the progressive-membership initiative won’t stand a chance. It’s so much easier to defer than to take action, and they’re busy manufacturing violent excuses for delay.”
The skin around Javier’s eyes tightened. “Don’t put this on me,” he snapped. “I’m not asking you to die for the sake of my proposal.”
“Nobody is going to die,” said Emily. “Unless it’s from a heart attack after overeating hors d’oeuvres.”
“I think what Javi is trying to say,” said Rosa, throwing him a sidelong glance, “is that we don’t want to lose you again.”
Javier looked down at his hands. The darkening mountains beyond the feed flash flooded Emily with vertigo. She wasn’t worthy of these people, friends who would forgive so much after so long.
“You guys are just plain terrible at pep talks,” said Emily. “Promise me you’ll never try coaching.”
“Promise us you’ll be careful,” said Rosa, narrowing her eyes.
“Sometimes the safest path is straight into the dragon’s lair,” said Emily.
“That’s not an answer,” said Javier tightly.
“I promise,” said Emily. “Now get back to your dinner. I’ve got a boss battle to fight.”
She killed the connection, spun the mu
sic, and jacked up the volume.
The chopper cut through a pass, enormous walls of black granite rising up on either side, the roar of the engine echoing down into the invisible depths. It was claustrophobic, and Emily waited for a gust of wind to dash the fragile machine against one of the walls. She would tumble down amid the shattered wreckage, vultures picking through her charred remains come morning.
Then she was out the other side, and the landscape opened up. A dome of stars covered a ring of peaks surrounding an alpine lake. The chopper descended, trees writhing on the slope below, and then it was skimming across the surface of the water, kicking up curtains of spray. A hot-pink laser traced a thick vertical line from the far shore into the outer atmosphere. As she got closer, Emily could see that it emanated from the parapet of a sprawling wood-and-stone mansion. More palace than house, it sported so many wings, floors, verandas, outbuildings, and courtyards that the operant philosophy of its owner could only be to maximize ostentation. Besides the laser, the only exterior illumination came from hundreds of small fires that flickered and gyrated bizarrely throughout the grounds.
The Ranch. Lowell’s exclusive personal resort. This was where he had laid the plans to win his concessions from the Arctic Council and helped Dag kill his first stag. Emily remembered playing voyeur in Dag’s feed as he’d forced down the buttery venison, then returned year after year to cavort with senators and captains of industry before ultimately finding his conscience and betraying Lowell. Taipei might be the central gravity well of official power, but the Ranch was where the elite came to loosen their ties and their morals. People had been murdered for invites, a fact that Lowell made sure nobody entirely forgot. That he had extended one to Pixie meant Emily had really gotten inside his head or, more to the point, his balls.
And then the chopper cleared the shore and dropped smoothly onto the lawn. Emily unclipped her harness. This was really happening. She touched her glasses for luck, steeled herself, and opened the door. A fathomless bass beat churned her internal organs, and she silenced the competing music in her feed. She held up a hand to her forehead to block the chopper’s downdraft as she stepped down onto the lawn. As soon as she disembarked, the engine whined, and it leapt back into the air as if scalded, accelerating off over the lake.
