“In eight hours, be at the Shanghai Pudong International Airport. We will escort you to Bangkok.”
“What if I’m late?”
“We will assist in making sure you arrive on time,” he answered in a voice bereft of menace that made it all the more menacing. Abruptly, they left.
“It looks like I have a date with four faceless thugs,” I said to Rebecca.
I took out my Pinlighter and went to use her computer. There, I uploaded the footage of Russ Lambert confirming Larry was dead. I also had footage of the girl with hair. I had it on timed automail to several media friends in case something happened to me and those faceless thugs got me. I took out the locket of hair I’d gotten from Plath and felt it against my fingers.
Should I expose the fake Larry for being an impostor and reveal the possibility of people with real hair? I needed to head to Gamble Town, meet with Tolstoy and Beauvoir. Then track down Russ. I only had eight hours before the Colonel’s thugs would be after me again.
While I was contemplating my course of action, Rebecca held out her hand. The fox necklace dangled from her fingers. “I don’t think I should keep this,” she said.
“You saved my life.”
“I was keeping an eye on you.”
“I don’t care about your reasons. You still saved my life,” I said. “Throw it away if you don’t want it.”
“What are you going to do about those guys?”
“I have no idea.” I opened up the door. “Don’t let anyone in,” I told her. “And if I don’t see you again.” I stared at her. “Thank you. For everything.”
She slapped me.
“W-what was that for?”
“Be strong,” she said. “I hate weak men.”
“You don’t like short ones either.”
“I’ll make an exception for one, but not both.”
The door shut. I hustled down.
III.
Hustle might have been an exaggeration. More like lumbering along. Walking was excruciatingly painful. The only place I could think of going was Gamble Town to visit Tolstoy and Beauvoir again. Maybe they could shed some light on what was going on as it was clear they were connected to Plath.
I got into the cab and asked the computerized driver to head to the airport. On the television, the incidents at all the different hair factories were being highlighted. I called a journalist friend, Lena, who served in Africa with me. She was giddy as she always was whenever there was lots of news to cover. Scenes of violence and death were interspersed with sexually explicit ads reminding people about the upcoming Global Entertainment Awards in Los Angeles. Both Jesus the General and Rhonda would be there, sharing a dance duet, although the prayer vigil was still ongoing and millions throughout the world were praying for his recovery from his flu.
“I’ve got something big,” I told Lena.
“Bigger than the attacks?”
“The real reason behind them,” I replied. “Where are you?”
“I’m in Seoul right now, but I’m heading over to Hong Kong,” she said.
“Send me your HK address. Or can you make a quick detour to Shanghai?”
“I can. But you need to give me a hint what this is all about.”
“Hair,” I replied, and would offer no more.
She didn’t seem convinced, but we had a lot of history together. “I can be there in 25, maybe 35 minutes if customs is tough.”
“I’ll pick you up from the airport.”
The communication ended and I called the hotel in Gamble Town where Beauvoir was staying. Surprisingly, the operator patched me through after saying, “She’s been expecting your call.”
“Hi, Nick. Nice wig,” she said.
“You look very nice yourself,” I answered, marveling at how beautiful she was. “I met your sister, Plath. I know what’s going on. At least part of it.”
“She told me.”
“Can we talk?”
“I think my brother wants to see you anyways.”
“Your br—”
Something crashed into my taxi and I heard Beauvoir scream, “Nick!”
Almost immediately, the whole compartment was filled with green gel, freezing me in place. It was designed to protect me from collisions as the car spun out of control. I could still see, though my visibility was filtered by the green gel that made me feel like a fishing bob in the ocean. Had I been in a car accident? That was impossible. There hadn’t been car accidents outside of America for decades, unless someone had taken manual control? Or had there been an automated failure? The gel was good for me and had medical palliatives to sooth my muscles. My shoulder and leg were grateful.
“Nick! Nick!” Beauvoir called.
I heard sirens and an ambulance arrived almost immediately. I tried talking through the gel, but my voice came back as a muted echo. Four EMTs pulled my cube out using medical shovels and carried me to the ambulance. Smoke was rising from my car and I saw a jeep had hit me from the front. Each of the EMTs had hats covering their faces. Crowds were watching me from the sidewalk, curious as they’d probably never seen a collision in real life. One of them opened the back door of the vehicle and I saw his face, or lack of. He was one of the Colonel’s men. Another faceless EMT grabbed a syringe and injected it into the gel. I became drowsy.
IV.
I was strapped to a bed. My clothes were still on. There were eight faceless guards I could see. We were in a basement, or was it an abandoned hospital room? There were stretchers in front of me, medical signs covered with dust that looked like they hadn’t been washed in years. The main faceless guard was dressed in a doctor’s blue surgical garb. He played with a scalpel, twirling it between his fingers like it was a pencil-sized baton.
“I thought I was going to see the Colonel,” I said.
“You will,” Dr. Faceless told me. “But we have a few hours to get acquainted.”
“Hooray.”
“Did you ever wonder how we became the way we are?”
“I actually did.”
“Good, because you’re going to find out directly.”
“What do you mean? I don’t wanna be part of this. Hey, man—”
“One more word without permission, and I will cut out your tongue. The only reason I haven’t done so already is the Colonel would prefer your tongue intact. But she’s open to having you type out your answers when she interrogates you later,” he said. “Anything more you want to say?” I kept my mouth shut. “Good. All of us were like you at first, uninitiated to the pleasures of pain. I promise you, by the end of your trials, pain will cause you bliss.”
I’d never thought I had a handsome face. But I still liked my mug the way it was and I had no interest in becoming “faceless.”
“None of us wanted it either,” the doctor continued. “I know what’s going through your mind. All of us experienced it the first time. You wonder what lovers, what family, what friends will think? The good news is, they won’t recognize you. Not unless you try to expose yourself. But if you do, you’ll find out how superficial all relationships are. Only when you lose your physical identity can you find your real self.”
Was he trying to convince me what he was doing was going to be good for me? I was eager to retort with some smart-ass remark, but I didn’t want to risk losing my tongue. It was cowardly to threaten my tongue which ranked second only to my manhood in terms of organ priority. Not that I looked with diminishment at any other part. I liked my body intact. Was there some way I could pull a Sampson, blow up my body and take all of these thugs with me? Just on principle, if I was going to die, I wanted to take as many of my enemies with me as I could. Unbelievable. He was still talking. Would he ever shut up? Many of these bad guys had to put on such a tough exterior for their followers, the only chance they had to relieve stress was with their opponents. In this case, I was more victim than opponent. Well, as long as he was talking, it meant he wasn’t going to cut my face up. Did I have any options? My hands were sealed too tigh
tly for me to grab anything. Could there be a self-destruct button on my armor I didn’t know about? If I ever got out of here, I had to make a request to George to add it. I knew in Africa, they sometimes gave the infantry poison-capsule teeth so they could kill themselves rather than suffer torture. The only problem was a few of them set it off accidentally during visits with prostitutes that caused a huge scandal and resulted in the banning of poison teeth throughout the world. Why was it that idiots always got laws changed to accommodate their dumb proclivities?
“When this is done, you will be as obedient as a dog, more ferocious than a bear, and more deadly than a viper,” he said. Great examples, asshole. “But first, we have to change your face. I will tell you, we will not be using anesthetics. You will have to endure it directly.” He waved the knife in front of me. “You two will become intimate. You must learn to control and channel pain. Pain is pleasure. Repeat it for me. Pain is pleasure.”
“Pain is pleasure,” I repeated.
“You say it without conviction because you haven’t experienced it yet. But soon, it will be your mantra, your creed of faith.”
The sock-puppet motion of his mouth disturbed me. Usually, thugs like this had deep crevasses in their faces, a grave look about them that was all business. But this guy appeared as though he were talking out of a mask made from flesh. And he wanted to make me like him? Why couldn’t people suffer in misery by themselves? I’d complained about friends in the past that hoped friends could be a sponge for their interminable negativity. This faceless doctor took that to another level.
The knife came down along my neck. I didn’t feel anything at first, just warmth along my neck. The pain followed a few seconds later as my sensors cried havoc and let loose the Chihuahuas of war. Blood slithered down the side of my neck.
“What do you want to know?” I asked. “I’ll tell you anything. Larry is dead. The Larry out there is an impostor. I don’t know who set off those explosives, but I wasn’t involved. I just came back after I was nearly taken a slave by—”
The doctor laughed. “We don’t care about your secrets,” he said. “All we care about is carving away your face and making you one of us.”
The knife landed in front of my ear and slowly slid its way towards my nose. Again, the same delayed pain response.
This guy was serious and there was nothing I could do. Or was there? Did I have to give up on my face?
Next time I saw Beauvoir, would she even recognize me? Or would she be horrified by me, thinking I was a thug there to take her away? The pain was intensifying. He wasn’t cutting deep. Just the surface. But my skin ruptured along its surface and all my cells were panicking that their ozone was being penetrated by a foreign object. Cell broadcasters projected potential Armageddon and many unbelievers became proselytes in these dismal times. No matter how old I got, my mind felt young, but my body was there to remind me that I was getting older by the second. I couldn’t believe this doctor had endured the same thing I had at some point. The cycle repeated. So many cycles I’d been part of, jet streams of violence I rode, trying to escape, finally reaching a current I couldn’t get out of, stuck in a whirlpool that meant I would drown. Fighting for oxygen, seeing the shore just at a distance, blood tattoos for my face ripped in strident lines. I wanted to close my eyes, but the doctor used his fingers to pry them apart. His hands had bulbous veins. He flashed the knife next to my eyes, wanting me to see the blood dripping at the edge. I could have sworn he was smiling, though his lip corners couldn’t stretch that far.
I refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing he was breaking me. With his next cut, I screamed out loud and laughed.
He said, “You think this is humorous?”
“Not at all. You don’t need to convince me pleasure is pain. I already know it. It’s what everyone’s been trying to tell me my whole life.”
“That was just the warm up,” he said. “Prepare yourself for the Colonel.”
A visual projection of the Colonel appeared. Her arms were behind her back as she approached me. “I gave you a chance, didn’t I?”
“I had no idea they would attack you. I was just chasing down Larry. I—”
“Don’t play the fool! You think I don’t know about your power play?”
Power play? “I don’t know what you’re talking about. But as long as you don’t have faceless guy here cut up my face, I’ll do anything you want.”
“It’s too late for negotiation. You’ve destroyed several key factories. What did you think that would achieve?”
She was blaming me? “Name your compensation,” I said.
“Your eternal servitude,” she replied. “Your undying gratitude.”
The projection ended. Negotiations had failed. If I couldn’t talk my way out of this, there had to be another way. My light bombs had been removed. Even with my armor on, there wasn’t anything I could do about a blade to my face. As Dr. Faceless waved his knife around, I tried to shake my way off the bed. The restraints were too secure and I prayed for a miracle.
It came with a dropping sound and one of the faceless falling over. The doctor turned around and I saw a man with white hair rushing at another guard. He moved gracefully as though he were performing a swan dance. When he lunged his hands, the ferocity of his plunge was feral, his mouth crunching into his nose, his nostrils flaring with savagery. He used a metallic chopstick to perforate their necks. One violent thrust in the pipe works of their esophagus resulted in a spray of blood splattering out. It was all in slow motion, the faceless men unable to scream as their throats were choked with blood. Flashes of white became a wavelength of death. I could see the blood cut off, the guards crumbling to their knees, their pants becoming a wrinkled mess. Even in agony, they could make no expression. Only their eyes betrayed them, the slit of their pupils grasping. They were victims of this reaper who sowed with his chopsticks and divested with his fingers.
When he’d finished killing the guards, he came to the doctor. The doctor had his knives but the killer was too quick. From behind, I saw a chopstick cut through where the doctor’s right eye should have been. Then another through the left side. The doctor crumbled to the floor.
My savior approached me. There was blood on his white hair. He was the man who’d given me an umbrella outside the convention center. I realized he was also the man that had killed Larry Chao using those sharp and pointed chopsticks.
“I’m Voltaire,” he said as he unloosed my straps. “We have a lot to discuss.”
V.
A woman named Austen who must have been a sister to Beauvoir and Plath stitched up my face. There were a few others who appeared to be brothers to Voltaire and carried guns. They all had white hair.
“You’re related to Tolstoy?” I asked Voltaire.
“He is my brother. He spoke highly of you.”
“What’d he say?”
“That you have guts.”
“He saved my life. And now you’ve saved my life. Thank you.”
He shrugged.
“You’ve dealt with a lot of them?” I asked, referring to the faceless.
“Even if they move and breathe, they’re not really living.”
While I was grateful to him for saving my life, I was positive he was Larry’s murderer. I wasn’t sure what my proper reaction should be. “How did you find me?”
“My sister, Beauvoir, insisted. Fortunately, I have sources among the faceless. Brothers who have sacrificed themselves for the cause,” he said.
I didn’t want to imagine what he meant by those words. “Why did you come?”
“We are more alike than you can imagine,” he said. “We both could not protect the ones we loved.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Larry told me about you,” he answered. Before I could ask more, he asked Austen, “How long before you’re finished?”
“Another ten minutes,” she answered as she patched me up.
“We need to hurry or we’ll be late
.”
One of the others brought me my armor and weapons.
“Is this all of it?” Voltaire asked me.
“I think so.”
“Put it on.”
If he was worried about me turning on him, he didn’t show it. I was tempted to paralyze him and set off a light bomb. As though he knew what I was thinking, he asked, “Do you want to know what Larry died for?”
“Of course,” I answered.
He put his hand on my shoulder. “I’ll show you.”
VI.
His group was small—seven white-haired men and five women. They walked like a clergy in a ceremonial procession, dressed in white robes. There was an ephemeral quality to all of them, asexual in appearance. It was a result of their unblemished skin and their perfect hair.
They escorted me out of the grounds that turned out to be an abandoned hospital. A convoy of four black cars awaited us.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Airport.”
“Are we going to Bangkok?”
“No. America,” he answered as we both got into the car.
“Why?”
“Do you know why the Colonel is after you?”
“She thinks I have the formula for the secret hair.”
“Do you?” He laughed.
“You all have real hair,” I replied as the car began driving.
“Which was harvested to make the best wigs,” Voltaire said. “You lived a tough childhood?”
“Tough childhood is relative. You?”
“I will show you my childhood. Soon. When we arrive in America. Let’s get back to the Colonel and Russ and why he wanted an impostor Larry.”
“Because he wanted to move into garbage?”
“You really have no clue?”
“No,” I answered.
Voltaire laughed and shook his chopstick at me. “I’m almost tempted not to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
He tapped his chopsticks on his knees, musing on a thought.
“Larry had no family,” he said.
“Yeah, I know.”
“That’s why he willed his entire fortune to you.”
“He doesn’t control his will,” I replied, knowing that super computer of his, set up by his father, controlled everything.
Bald New World Page 19
