by Sean Platt
“What a coincidence. City Surveillance has sent out Pacifiers to quell another riot in progress, and this time, it looks like the riot squads are through pretending to play nice.”
Kate flexed as Dominic stood and reached for his coat.
“Why is that a coincidence?”
“It’s in the dooryard of Wellings Place,” Dominic said, “where Isaac and Natasha Ryan live.”
Chapter Nine
Isaac was looking out the window when Natasha came up behind him and put her arms around his waist. The affectionate gesture made him flinch. They’d been married for sixty years, and for maybe fifty-five of them Natasha only came at Isaac from behind when she meant to hit him with something.
“What are you looking at?” she asked.
Isaac left Natasha’s hands where they were, backing carefully so as not to dislodge her. His assault-then-salvation at The Sap was intended as a political move meant to knock Natasha down from her pre-Shift noisemaking but had instead won back his wife’s affection. For days now, Natasha had been her old, sweet self to Isaac. And Isaac, as calloused as he’d grown in the wake of her constant insults, found he rather liked being his wife’s hero.
Isaac dragged a rectangle on the window with the finger and thumb of both hands then pulled it forward to expand it into a semi-holo. He rubbed the three-dimensional scene’s back to increase its opacity and give it a dark background, and then they watched events in the yard below play out in front of their eyes like a living diorama.
“Another riot? Right in front of the building?” Natasha asked, her voice uncharacteristically sweet. Normally, she’d have said those same words bitingly, as if implying the clash below was Isaac’s incompetent fault. Now she said it airily, as if on top of the world without a care.
Isaac almost joked, At least I didn’t start this one to impress you, but stilled his traitorous tongue in time. Instead, he said, “Looks that way.”
“Does it make you nervous?”
Isaac gave her a dismissive look. “Nah. I’ve already checked the police feed. They’re sending bots.”
“Bots just stir them around.”
“This time, they sent Pacifiers.”
Isaac expanded the hologram. Sure enough, they watched as bullet-shaped drones moved in from the scene’s edge. Seen in miniature, it was comical. Down on the street, the ministrations of Pacifier robots and the accompanying human riot squads would have filled the air with screaming.
Natasha laid her head on Isaac’s shoulder, her hands still around his waist. “Serves them right.”
Isaac swiped the hologram away and turned inside his wife’s embrace to face her. He said, “Callous bitch.”
Natasha stared at him for a minute then broke into a laugh. Then Isaac kissed her, and she didn’t fight him.
“Do you think this all will end when Shift is over?” Natasha asked.
“I thought we agreed: no politics.”
“It’s not politics. I’m just talking about the reality of the world around us.”
Isaac thought: There isn’t a reality. There is only the bullshitting of politics. But again he held his tongue.
“I imagine it’ll die down after Shift,” he said.
“I’m ready for it to be over,” Natasha replied, again laying her head on Isaac’s shoulder. He felt its weight, appreciating it and wondering at his wife’s allegiances. She wasn’t especially loyal to anything, but hers was a childlike disloyalty. She adored what made her feel good and resented what made her feel bad. She was the kind of person who stopped being an atheist and found religion when things were dire because the thing she disbelieved was the only thing left to offer hope.
“Five more days.”
She looked at the window. The magnifier hologram was gone, and they were too far from the pane to look down, but Isaac knew she was thinking of the crowd outside, and the beatings in its middle.
“After Shift, nothing changes for the rioters,” Natasha said. “They’ve come at me twice because I’m a symbol of wealth and success. I won’t stop being that in five days, and they won’t stop being poor.”
“Shift gives people reasons to hate each other that they don’t normally have. It stirs up differences.”
Natasha shrugged against Isaac’s shirt. “I guess.”
After a moment, Natasha looked up. She met Isaac’s eyes. Her own were bright green. Her nose was thin and delicate, different from the nose on the songstress Isaac had fallen for all those years ago. Her cheeks were too thin, devoid of a woman’s natural softness. But despite it, she didn’t look as hard to him as she usually did. And now, temporarily able to see his wife as something other than an adversary, Isaac wondered how much of her anger had come from hurt. When they were fighting, admitting that Natasha was a fundamentally damaged person was tantamount to forgiveness for her bad behavior. But he could see her neediness. Fraught with danger as it was, Natasha was seeing Isaac as her rock. She’d believe whatever he said and not argue or fight.
For now.
“Do you hate me?” she asked.
“Why would I hate you?”
“Because I’m shifting.”
“I thought we said no politics?”
“I’m serious, Isaac.”
He didn’t hate her right now. But even in the storm’s eye, her decision was something raw between them.
“You could not shift,” Isaac said.
“I have to.”
“You don’t have to. You could hold a press release. Tell the sheets that you’ve changed your mind.”
“No. I don’t mean that I have to because of public opinion. I have to because I have to. For me.”
Isaac felt a bubble of resentment. The whole point of staging The Sap incursion had been to make Natasha owe him something, and see him as less than a failure. Doing so had hit two birds with one stone (setting a trap for insurgents that needed quelling regardless, plus obligating and humbling Natasha), but Isaac’s biggest motivator had always been pride. He’d spun a lot of bullshit about power balance between parties for Aiden Purcell, but even Purcell had known the coup-and-savior bit was about Isaac’s ego alone.
“You can do all the same things in Directorate than you can in Enterprise.”
“I can’t. I feel like a — ” she hesitated then held up a palm as she continued to silently add…and you know I mean no offense by this, “ — a sellout by remaining Directorate. You understand, don’t you?”
“Understand that the party I head is about selling out?”
“I don’t mean it that way.”
“But you do. You just said it.”
Natasha gave a sad little smile and patted Isaac’s chest. “We’re just different is all. You knew that when you met me. I have to walk the edge to be happy, and I can’t walk on an edge when I know I can’t fall.”
Isaac watched himself from the inside, seeing his gut response rise and pause. He wanted to fight. This was an old argument, and he took offense every time. But the offense, he’d been seeing recently, was something he wanted to have. As if he could decide to not be offended but liked stepping into the stinging whip.
So he stuffed it down and nodded.
“So do you hate me?”
A little.
“No. Of course not.”
“And you understand? You understand why I still have to do this?”
No. Bitch.
“I suppose so.”
“I’ll cancel the concert. You’re right; I was doing that to hurt you. I don’t need a comeback show. I can quietly change parties. Because it’s not about showing the world. It’s about me. I’ll be as quiet as I can, and nobody needs to know other than the registrar and the sheets that just won’t leave me alone about it.” She stepped back, holding both of his hands at arm’s length. She gave his hands a squeeze: thin hands that felt emaciated, versus the water-fat hands he’d held at their wedding. “I owe you that much.”
“You don’t owe me.” But now he was being self-effacing —
one or two steps from Aw shucks, ma’am.
“You saved my life. If you hadn’t shown up when you did…”
“I got lucky.”
“You knew. You knew it was a bad idea. My security wasn’t any help at all. I was so sure about it all. You tried to warn me. Even Jameson tried to warn me.”
“Jameson Gray? You talked to Jameson Gray about this?”
“I asked for advice.”
“Is there something going on with you and him?” Isaac’s eyes flicked toward Natasha’s office, suddenly wondering if Gray was her virtual lover, whom she met in the Viazo to spite him.
“Isaac, I keep telling you. He’s gay.”
But of course, Isaac knew that, too. Gray had millions of screaming female fans and a debonair, handsome onstage persona. But in person, the illusionist was gayer than Christmas.
You’re trying to pick a fight, he thought. Because this time you’re wrong, and you want to be punished.
That was far too insightful for his internal compass. Isaac wanted to dismiss the idea on principle. But that, too, was only deflection. Usually, from Isaac’s perspective, Natasha was the manipulative, self-serving, duplicitous one. But this time Isaac held the secret. He’d committed an atrocity leading to deaths. They were criminal deaths and people best taken out of circulation anyway, but in the end those people had died to help Isaac lie to his wife.
He’d wanted her appreciation and respect, but cheating left an aftertaste. The more Natasha tried to respect him, the more he withdrew. He hadn’t seen that bit of self-sabotage coming.
Isaac sighed. He let go of Natasha’s hands, crossed to the conversation pit, and sank into a chair. He looked up at Natasha. She was wearing a gown not much more casual than she’d wear onstage. An elegant thing that came to her ankles. She was a star, even off duty.
“I’ll just be glad when this is all over and we can get on with our lives,” he said.
“Over” meaning the lies. The cheating, in mind and body. The schemes within plans. The uncertainty over who is friend and who is foe — although that never really ends.
Natasha sat next to him, squeezing in. The chair had been meant for one, but Natasha was tall and thin like Isaac, and they fit together like pencils sharing a drawer.
“Me too,” she said.
“Have you talked to Micah?”
“You mean since that first night?”
“Yeah.”
“No. Why would I?”
“Because he’s Enterprise.”
As well as she could in their confined arrangement, Natasha looked over. “I traded parties, not brothers.”
“I just thought he might want to advise you.”
“He might,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to listen.”
“Oh.” Pause. “Thanks.”
“How did it happen, Isaac? I’ve known Micah as long as I’ve known you, and you’ve always been on opposite sides. Brothers but not really. Like you had to associate, so you did, but every other moment was spent trying to be opposite the other. You were Directorate, and he was Enterprise before Directorate and Enterprise existed. Why?”
It was a complex question with a complicated answer. He gave Natasha the simple version — the one she more or less expected.
“Sibling rivalry, maybe. We were just different. Micah is competitive, and seems to think I need tough love. Being Micah’s brother has always been like running a gauntlet.”
“But no matter how much you were at each other’s throats, you kept meeting regularly. Even when it’s as if a war was brewing between your camps, you got together in a closed room. What do you talk about, when things are at their worst?”
That question was even more complicated.
“Brother stuff.”
“Do you think he loves you?”
Isaac turned to look at Natasha’s face. From this close, she took up his entire field of vision. At first, he wasn’t sure how to answer. The question was presumptuous and intensely personal. It was also intimate — the kind of thing loving wives and husbands discuss, but that Isaac and Natasha never had. It felt uncomfortable at best, awkward at worst.
“I guess.”
Natasha seemed satisfied with his non-answer, but then Isaac saw something else enter her expression. A sense of guarding, as if there was a reason she’d asked after all. Something she wasn’t saying — not because it was a secret, but because she was nervous.
“What?”
Natasha looked like she might deny whatever he was implying, but then sort of broke and said, “I talked to him once. Just on a voice call. But he called me; I didn’t call him. And it was short.”
She said “very short” as if in justification, as if Isaac might be angry, the way a woman tells her husband, after an affair, that “it just happened.”
“And?” Isaac asked.
“He asked me to that big event on Wednesday.”
“As a date?”
She pressed her lips together as if slightly ashamed. “Because I’m going to be Enterprise. And the guy running it is Enterprise.”
“Do you mean Braemon’s thing? Craig Braemon?”
“I guess? Micah probably said. The one who lives in the ritzy part of Harlem.”
“Are you going?”
Again, she gave that expression.
“Natasha, what?”
“He asked me to go, and I was thinking I wouldn’t because…Well, it just seemed like an insult to you. And this was just after the whole thing at The Sap, so I was going to say no, on principle. But before I could say anything, he said he wanted me to invite you, too.”
“Me?”
“He didn’t say it like a concession. I didn’t even get a chance to decline.”
“But let’s face it — the Violet James stuff is just an excuse. This is an Enterprise thing, and I’m Directorate. I’m the face of Directorate.”
Natasha gave him a helpless shrug.
“If he wanted to invite me, why didn’t he invite me? Why are you supposed to?”
“Probably because I know Jameson better than he does. Because Micah knows that Jameson has always been a good friend to me, almost like an advisor.”
Isaac’s eyebrows drew together. The illusionist again.
“What does Jameson have to do with it?”
At this, Natasha’s smile grew wide. “Oh, this is the fun part. Will you go?” She said it excitedly, and Isaac realized that’s what a lot of this buildup had been about all along: Natasha wanted Isaac to go. Whatever was brewing, she found the idea delightful and enchanting, and just needed to break him in.
“What does Jameson Gray have to do with inviting me?” Isaac repeated.
“Jameson is doing a stage show at the event. And as part of it, he’s going to teach Micah how to do a trick, in the spirit of the occasion.”
“What does that mean?”
Natasha smiled wider. “Seeing as Directorate will clearly win Shift, they thought a lighthearted way to poke fun at it all and show that there’s no hard feelings would be for Micah to make you disappear.”
Chapter Ten
“Honey,” said Jameson Gray, “you’re a shitty beautiful assistant.”
Natasha made her face faux-offended. She was doing a fine job. She’d watched all the old 2-D vidstreams of white-gloved magicians in tuxedos waving magic wands, gesticulating while circling their illusions. She’d paid closest attention to the magicians’ assistants and had, she thought, prompted the Viazo immersion to dress her in suitably similar attire and style. While her body reclined in her office behind a locked door (she didn’t want Isaac peeking), her virtual self was decked to the nines. She had her hair in a ridiculous pile of blonde whorls. Her dress was tiny, silver, and covered in blinding sparkles. Her long legs ended in tall heels, and they were currently engaged in making her ass look fabulous.
“Excuse me?” she said.
“You’re giving away the whole illusion. You keep looking back at me like you’re waiting fo
r a prompt. Don’t you know the first rule of illusion?”
“Make stuff vanish?”
“Misdirection,” Jameson said. “You need to have your own attention in one place, but to project it somewhere else. A good magician shows the audience the right hand in a flourish at the moment the left must be unseen.”
Natasha looked at the contraption in front of her. It consisted of a tank, a drape, and a hoop she was supposed to drop at the right moment. It wasn’t the illusion they’d perform onstage; it was a starter to get her primed and earn her chops. But she’d missed a trick, it seemed. If Jameson was doing something with his hands, she sure hadn’t seen it.
“Not literally my hands, stupid,” Jameson said.
“Don’t call me stupid.”
“Why not? Micah will call you stupid, stupid.”
“Micah’s not here.”
Jameson sighed. He fell backward like the culmination of a trust-building exercise, except that nobody was behind to catch him. A large divan appeared beneath him before he crashed to the floor. Not even a couch. Jameson had asked the immersion for a divan.
“Thank West for that,” he said.
“Do you not want to teach Micah this trick?”
“Illusion. Not trick.”
Natasha rolled her eyes, summoned a divan to match Jameson’s, and slumped down opposite him. She wasn’t sure if she was mocking him or not. They were both divas, inches from requesting bare-chested men to feed them grapes.
“Oh, I’m so sorry. Do you not want to teach Micah to prestidigitate and craft masterful illusions like you?”
Jameson made an annoyed little wave. “Oh, I already showed him. I had to modify the whole thing because I didn’t want him knowing the way I normally do things. And not because I think he’ll spill the beans. I just don’t like the idea of him, of all people, knowing my craft.”
Natasha resisted an impulse to mock the pompous way Jameson said “craft.” Then she asked, “If you don’t want him to do the trick, why did you agree when he asked you?”
Jameson’s eyes bristled at Natasha’s use of the word “trick.”
