High Stakes: A Wild Cards Novel

by George R. R. Martin

  One man stood on a street corner. He looked to be nibbling on a troublesome fingernail, oblivious to the armed group passing by. It wasn’t until Marcus noticed the blood dribbling down his chin and the front of his shirt that he realized the man was eating his own fingers—literally eating them—pulling on the flesh and gnawing at the bone.

  “Did you see that?” he asked Olena. “Something’s not right here. I mean really not right. You feel it?”

  “Feel what?” Olena asked.

  Marcus couldn’t answer. He hadn’t known there was an it until he asked the question. At first he thought it was irritation at being dragged on this mission. Then it was worry over the chaos, and then horror at what Vasel had done to the soldier. All of that was true, but there was something else growing on him as well. He couldn’t name it, though, and that annoyed him. “You said your dad’s an ace, right? What’s his power? Something good, I hope.”

  “No,” Olena said, with a curt tone that closed the topic, “is nothing good.”

  A little farther on an army truck sat in the center of an intersection. A gunner slumped against a machine gun mounted in the truck bed. Vasel motioned for the guards to keep their weapons hidden. They approached cautiously. The street and sidewalks were cluttered with objects that at first Marcus couldn’t make out. When his tail bumped against something soft he looked down. A mangled half face looked up at him. He surged back, crying out. A dead body. That’s what lay in pooling blood all around the truck. Bodies, all of them torn apart, mangled and in unnatural positions.

  The gunner must’ve heard Marcus’s cry. Looking at them, he began to howl like a wolf. He yanked the gun around and began strafing them. His aim was high and wild, mostly splintering the plaster wall behind them. At least one bullet found its target, though. It all but exploded the head of one of the guards. They all scrambled, hit the ground, dodged behind parked cars. A few of the guards returned fire. They missed. Vasel didn’t.

  The gangster stepped out in front of them, cool as you please. He snapped his fingers and sent his coin toward the gunner. It flipped over and over in the air in a strange slow motion. Marcus’s eyes followed it, transfixed. It was beautiful the way it twinkled. If he was nearer he would’ve reached out and caught it. Luckily, he didn’t.

  The soldier did, though. He relinquished his grip on the machine gun long enough to swat at the coin. It hit his palm and stuck to it. The expression on the man’s face changed from senseless rage to instant terror. He stared, wide-eyed, at his palm and tried desperately to shake the coin free. His mouth fell open as if to scream, but he got out nothing more than a guttural, trembling wail. His veins and arteries went black beneath his skin. He looked at Vasel, pleading, and then around at others. He threw back his head, sputtering. And then his body fell apart. Skin and tissue sloughed off his bones. His internals slipped down around his waist and then burst through the skin. And then he crumpled, becoming a pile of stinking meat and bone, blood and faces.

  Vasel lifted his hand and the coin flew back and slapped against his palm. A second later, he had it dancing on his fingers where every eye could see it. He looked at Marcus, a bemused expression on his face. “See?” he asked. “Heads or tails. It doesn’t matter. Either way, I win; they lose.”

  As he strolled away, Olena muttered, “I told you. His power is nothing good.” She pulled him close, her face near to his and deadly serious. “Marcus, never catch his coin. Promise me. If he throws it, look away. Swear that you will look away.”

  Marcus did. She kissed him for it and pulled him into motion. The swearing was an automatic response on his part. The reality that his girlfriend’s father could turn him into a steaming pile of mush with the toss of that coin was a bit too much to process.

  Olena said something in a tone ominous enough to cut his thoughts off. “Why are they looking at us like that?”

  They were a family of five that had just come around a corner and stood staring at the group. A father and a mother, three kids of various ages, the youngest perhaps five or six. To an armed group of thugs the family should’ve posed no danger. Yet the way they stared … The way the father’s lips pulled back and his teeth clattered against each other … The way they crouched and held their hands curled before them, their fingers abnormally long … They started toward them at a run. They came on like animals, like they wanted to rip them limb from limb and devour them.

  The guards opened fire. The family ran right into it. Their bodies twisted and jerked as the barrage of bullets ripped them to pieces, kicking out plumes of blood. The guards kept firing even after they’d all gone down. They sent rounds into the bodies, making them quiver from the impacts. Vasel had to yell and smack them to get them to stop.

  Marcus wanted to look away from the corpses, but he couldn’t help but slide a bit closer. Their fingers really were longer than normal. They were multi-jointed, twisted things that even in death seemed clenched in a rictus of pain.

  “Jokers,” Andrii said, disgustedly. So he knew at least one word in English.

  Vasel pressed his coin against his cheek as he nudged a corpse with the toe of his pointy shoes. “Black mamba, are these your kind?”

  “My kind?” Marcus asked, letting a savage edge sharpen his words.

  “Jokers.”

  “Look, I had nothing to do with them! I don’t know what they were.”

  “Papa, let’s get out of here,” Olena said. “Something is very bad here.”

  Vasel ignored her. He straightened. Looking at Marcus, he concluded, “They are jokers. Deformed like this—what else could they be? This is their night of revenge. Are you with them, or with us?”

  “I’m with her,” Marcus said.

  “I don’t know about that.” Vasel’s coin was in his hand again, sliding like a living, acrobatic thing over his fingers. “Maybe I’m through with—”

  “Papa!” Olena snapped. “You know my promise.”

  Vasel thought a moment. Then he shrugged. The coin disappeared. He said, “I must love my daughter very much, see? Even now I’m proving it.”

  Now that he was back in civilization Franny realized he could buy a prepaid cell phone and get in touch with the precinct. It wasn’t hard to locate a large shopping center called MEGA. As he drove into the parking lot he spotted a new, upscale hotel that actually looked like a hotel, and he wished he’d driven a little farther into the city proper last night and found the first-world hotel. They probably would have had room service and no mold. On the downside they probably wouldn’t have had such a compliant desk clerk.

  He pulled into a space in the parking garage, grabbed money out of the Big Bag O’Cash and Jewels. He figured the old lady wouldn’t come out of the anesthesia while he nipped inside. Within minutes he was back in the van.

  He pulled out so he would have better reception, found some street parking, and turned off the van. Overhead five helicopters beat their way across the sky, and contrails crossed the sky like spiderwebs. Franny dialed the number for Fort Freak.

  “Fifth Precinct,” the receptionist sang out.

  “This is Detective Francis Black, put me through to the duty captain.”

  “One moment.”

  “Mendelberg.”

  He wasn’t happy to hear the voice of the joker captain. They had butted heads more than a few times during his investigations of the missing jokers, but she was the one on duty so he’d make the best of it.

  “Captain, it’s Francis Black.”

  “Still enjoying your all-expenses-paid trip to fucking Kazakhstan, Black? You need to get your ass back to New York and help us straighten out this clusterfuck.”

  “Great. Can you wire me money, identification? Contact the authorities here in Shymkent to clear us and get us on a plane.”

  “Who is this us, Kemosabe?”

  He wondered if Kemosabe was some Jokertown reference that he hadn’t heard, but let it go. “Baba Yaga. I’ve got her under arrest … well sort of. I want her back in New York
. She says she has information ’cause there is some really weird shit going down over here—”

  “Yeah, that’s why you need to get the fuck out of there. People are saying it’s a new wild card outbreak or maybe some kind of toxic spill. Look, you’ve got no jurisdiction over there. She’s Kazakhstan’s problem. Leave her.”

  “It’s our people she brutalized. She needs to face justice in New York. And if I leave her here she’ll die. She’s been hurt—”

  “Let her die. From what the jokers have told us it’s what she deserves.”

  “No.”

  “You have zero authority to arrest or extradite anybody, and you are so on the bubble, Black. If you don’t want your ass fired—”

  “I want to talk to Maseryk—”

  There was an abrupt click and the line went dead. Franny called back to the precinct.

  “This is Black again. I got disconnected.”

  “Hold the line.” A few seconds later the receptionist was back. “Captain Mendelberg is in a meeting and can’t be disturbed.”

  “What the hell? I was just talking to her.”

  “She can’t take the call. You can try again later.”

  “Then get me Maseryk.”

  “He won’t be in until tomorrow. Sorry. I’ll give Captain Mendelberg the message.” The receptionist hung up.

  Maybe Mendelberg was on the phone to SCARE? Or trying to arrange for them to get back to the States. Should he wait? But there was something off about the situation. In the backseat Baba Yaga stirred and cried out in pain.

  Franny slewed around though it hurt like the blazes. “It’s okay. It’s okay. You’re safe.”

  “Where?”

  “Shymkent.”

  “Good. Must get farther…” She looked down at the sleeve of her dress falling empty onto the seat next to her. “My arm.”

  “I’m sorry. It was killing you.”

  She just nodded. Franny wasn’t sure she fully understood. Or maybe she was just that cold. “We must go, boy … now … before it reaches us…” Her voice trailed away.

  “Before what reaches us?”

  “Madness and death.”

  “That tells me nothing.”

  “Get us far … away from here, boy. So we can live … for a little while longer.”

  Barbara walked into the conference room to find it ablaze with flat screens, each one set to a different news channel and all of them with the sound muted. The conference table was piled with paper: news reports compiled by Ink, Barbara assumed. Secretary-General Jayewardene was seated before one pile, reading studiously. At another was Klaus, though he wasn’t reading; he was watching the flat screen across the table, where Wolf Blitzer was standing in front of a satellite map of Kazakhstan, zooming in on the city of Talas. As Blitzer’s mouth moved silently (a small blessing, in Barbara’s opinion) the display toggled back and forth between two satellite images, one dated a month earlier with the buildings intact on a sunny day, and another dated the day before, which showed only a circular darkness around the city, with ominous plumes of smoke curling out from the edges like black tentacles.

  “Ah, Ms. Baden,” Jayewardene said. “I’ve been looking at the excellent reports that Ink has sent us.” He tapped the pages in front of him with a thin finger. “This is … interesting. And troubling.”

  “Yes, and once again we’re wasting time talking about it when we should already be moving,” Klaus said before Barbara could respond. She ignored the comment and slid into her own chair, addressing Jayewardene.

  “I read most of the reports in the car on the way here,” she said. “Ink sent them to my phone. Anything new?”

  Jayewardene waved a hand at the screens around them. “No one knows anything for certain,” he said, “which is why it would be a mistake to send anyone to Talas now.” That was directed to Klaus, whose lips twisted into a scowl. He slumped back in his seat. “In any case,” Jayewardene continued, “we would have to have authorization from President Karimov before we could send anyone into that country. I’ve reached out to Temir Bondarenko, their UN representative; we should hear from him later today. Then we can decide.”

  “Ink’s updated me on what the news channels have been saying,” Barbara said, glancing up at the screens again. On MSNBC, Chris Matthews was listening to one of three “expert” talking heads on the screen with him. On Fox, a scroll bar across the bottom asked the question Kazakh Spring? Putin denies Russian involvement. “I’ve heard everything from this being Russia trying to undermine President Karimov’s government, to a toxic spill in the Talas River, to a new wild card virus outbreak. Everyone is contradicting everyone else. I haven’t been able to get anything solid and verifiable.”

  “Which is why we need to get aces on the ground there,” Klaus grunted. “Why can’t anyone see that?” His single ice-blue eye tracked from Jayewardene to Barbara. “You stopped me from going to East Timor because you were worried that Talas was going to blow up. Well, it looks to me like it has. So let me put together a team. Bubbles might be out for the moment, but I could get Aero, Brave Hawk, and Tinker to go with me—”

  Barbara saw Jayewardene shaking his head before Klaus had finished talking. “Not without President Karimov’s blessing,” he said. “We don’t want this to become an international incident on top of everything else.”

  “So we sit here with our thumbs up our—” Klaus stopped, his mouth snapping shut audibly.

  “I know you want to help, Klaus. I know,” Barbara said. “But the Secretary-General’s right. The Committee’s SST can reach Talas in six hours with one refueling stop. Even with needing to get equipment and supplies on board, we could put a team on the ground in less than twelve hours. But we need permission, and we need to have a better idea of what we’re sending people into, for their own safety. For that matter, who do we send? If this is all due to a toxic spill of some sort, for instance, Talas needs hazmat teams, not aces. If it’s a disease outbreak, then UN needs to send doctors and nurses and medicines, and we should be coordinating with the Red Cross. We can’t all just hop on a plane and go to Egypt.” Lohengrin exhaled, a snakelike hiss, at that reference to the past. Barbara spread her hands wide over the papers. On the screen above Lohengrin, MSNBC was now showing a clip of two Kazakh jokers being interviewed a few days before.

  “Then let me know when you have your permission and when you’ve actually decided something,” Klaus said, and Barbara could hear the undercurrent of rage and frustration in his voice. He pushed away from the desk, scattering papers. He picked up one of the sheets between forefinger and thumb and waved it toward Jayewardene and Barbara both.

  “You can’t fight a war with paper, no matter how hard you try,” he said, his German accent more pronounced than usual, and left the room.

  The light was weird. It was jaundiced and foul and he couldn’t see well in it. It wasn’t exactly night, but no day had ever felt like this. Mist oozed up from the ground. It rippled and morphed in the air, changing the shape of things seen through it. Through it the casino didn’t look much like it did when Marcus had glimpsed it on the night of the breakout. He recognized it, sure. There was the awning over the opening. There was the big blocky sign with the weird letters, and the flash entrance and the big plate-glass sliding doors through which the high rollers had been fighting to escape. But nothing looked right. The building sat like a malignant creature, as if its windows were eyes and it was only pretending not to be staring at the approaching group. He couldn’t shake the feeling that the building and everything around it shifted when his eyes weren’t directly on it—a slithery motion that he could never truly catch, that snapped to stillness each time he looked.

  Marcus was sure there was more to all this than some weird outbreak of violence. There was something in the air. He could smell it. He could feel it on his skin, something oily about it. It reminded him of the arena. It was the smell of the maddening, murderous fury that he’d felt there. That had been one thing in that small spa
ce, for amusement and controlled by Baba Yaga thugs, but what would happen if there was nothing to control it? If that horror had no bounds? If it didn’t fade when a fight was called?

  Under the awning, Vasel pointed a finger at one of the thugs and spoke Ukrainian. He glanced at Marcus and deigned to speak English. “You stay here with him. Nobody comes in this door.”

  Marcus started to protest, but Olena shook her head. “We will be quick,” she said. “I know the way. Five minutes only and we’ll be back.”

  Watching the others vanish into the mouth of the casino, Marcus couldn’t help feeling they were being swallowed. The casino was a living beast. It always had been. Why the fuck am I letting her go? It seemed the worst thing ever. The stupidity of it clenched a fist around his heart and left him gasping. He whispered, “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!” He would’ve yelled it but he was afraid to. Afraid of what might hear him.

  The thug yanked him around by the elbow. He hissed something. The words were incomprehensible gibberish. The guy looked jittery, his eyes jumping about and his cheeks twitching. “Hey, you all right?” Marcus asked. Of course, the guy couldn’t understand him and didn’t answer.

  Marcus shook his head to clear it. He took in the grassy oval in front of the casino and the streets that circled it and the buildings beyond. Figures moved, but most of them were far enough away that he couldn’t see them clearly. That was for the best. One man looked to be dragging a corpse behind him as he limped forward, leaving a dark smear as he went. Something scrambled up the side of a building in the distance, a dark shape that moved from window to window until it found one it liked. It smashed the glass and disappeared inside. A scream cut the air. From inside the room with the smashed window? Marcus wasn’t sure, but he wondered what was happening in there. He had a notion that the scrabbling creature was killing. Eating. He swallowed, wishing he could see. Maybe it was fucking and eating and killing at the same time. He counted the stories to the smashed window and how many rows over from the edge of the building. He could go there and look and maybe he could fuck and eat and—