by Cody Sisco
“You were playing with my life!” Victor smacked her in the face. She was still. He paced in the small space between the beds, not sure what he would do next. Whom could he trust? Everyone seemed to have their own version of the truth. His uncertainty was tearing him apart. He fingered the Handy 1000 in his pocket, then gripped the gas bomb.
Karine said, “Untie me, and let them go. We’ll forget this happened. A little slip-up. Completely understandable, but if I have to press charges, they’ll put you in a Class One facility.”
She was threatening him?
“Or I could kill you,” Victor said. The calm, measured tone of his own words surprised him.
Karine laughed. “You’d never do that,” she said.
Victor pulled Karine’s hair—hard—jerking her head back. “You don’t know what I’m capable of.”
Karine's laugh, a rusty, coughing cackle. “Are you trying to scare me? Look at you, playing at a rampage. You can’t kill us. You wouldn’t put your family through that.”
Victor looked at the two freelancers bound and gagged on the bed, at Karine sitting in the chair, trussed like a turkey. It wouldn’t take much. A blow or two to the head for each of them. They could drive the bodies to some remote piece of land and drop them off. It would be easy.
Elena stepped forward and said to Karine, “It’ll look like you got caught in a turf war. Victims of dickie violence in the R.O.T., simple as that. An investigation could take years.”
Elena shoved Karine’s head down. Her hair had lost its lift; red strands hung in her face like copper wire.
Victor remembered the incident in the juice shop. His hands had wanted to transform into claws and rip out that young woman’s heart. It was the same feeling he had now: a pounding thunderous anger. And why not feel that way? He had a right.
But he’d been wrong about the woman in the juice shop, hadn’t he? Ric had wondered if she had MRS too. Maybe she did. She could have just wanted to talk to Victor. Everyone had a different truth.
Lucky’s sobs grew louder. Bandit tried to say something through his gag.
“Victor?” Elena put her hand on his shoulder. “I think we have to get rid of them.”
“Agreed,” Tosh said, “Nothing personal, of course.”
“Everybody shut up!” Victor yelled. He felt his heart racing. In a lower voice directed at Tosh and Elena, he said, “I’m going to decide what’s next. No one else.”
Karine’s voice pierced the dim room. “Victor, don’t.”
Elena whispered in Victor’s ear. “She was going to lock you up and throw away the key! I’ll do it, so you don’t have to.” Elena nodded toward Tosh. “We’ll do it for you.”
Victor looked at the bodies writhing on the bed, at Karine’s hard, desperate face. They deserved to be punished. Tosh cocked his head to the side. He wore a know-it-all smirk under scheming eyes. Elena stood tall.
“Not yet,” Victor said. “I need to know if she murdered my—if she assassinated Jefferson Eastmore.”
“That fantasy again,” Karine said. “I don’t know anything about that.”
Victor peered at her face. “You knew him. You poisoned him. You took his place on the Health Board. You got your fingers in his company.”
She said, “You have a disturbing ability to ignore the facts when it suits you.”
Victor said, “Radiation killed him. That’s a fact. Tosh saw the evidence.”
Tosh nodded.
Karine pursed her lips. “That’s why the body was exhumed, wasn’t it? What makes you think it wasn’t an accident? Or suicide!”
Victor said, “He didn’t want to see any of this happen—what’s happened to people with MRS. Stims showing up everywhere—he would have hated that.”
“More conspiracy nonsense.”
“It’s not nonsense. Stims mimic my condition.”
“Of course they do. That’s an open secret. You know about stims? Hooray for you. Pretty much anyone paying attention to the epidemic knows that. Why do you think we’ve been adjusting the diagnostic protocols?”
Elena sucked in her breath. “You want to treat addicts the same way you treat people with MRS?”
“Why not? The Classification System is comprehensive, humane. If Jefferson hadn’t closed Oak Knoll, we’d have better treatments by now.” She pulsed against her restraints. “The bigger problem is that we’re constantly being hacked. That’s what started this whole mess.”
Victor leaned forward and smelled her perfume: lavender and sandalwood, hints of the ocean. He heard waves on the shore and tasted salt spray. “What do you mean?”
“Apparently, stims are based on a first-generation XSCT compound that was stolen from the Holistic Healing Network. Mind you, I was told all this secondhand after the merger.” Karine’s voice took on the monotone she used when dispensing updates at company meetings. “It wasn’t just your family’s company that got hit. Last year, there was an intrusion at Gene-Us, too. The accessed data included the MRS gene sequence. Clearly, someone used the stolen information to design and manufacture stims.”
XSCT was the compound that had been shipped to the Lone Star Kennel. Victor had to find a way around the Corps guarding it. Maybe Karine wasn’t completely useless.
Victor said, “But even my hacker buddy couldn’t decrypt the sequence.”
“Maybe your buddy is lying. Maybe he’s the thief,” Karine said.
Victor narrowed his eyes.
Karine continued, “We assumed that the person who stole the sequence had a decryption key. There aren’t many, but every member of the Health Board has one. Victor, are you sure Jefferson wasn’t . . .”
“Wasn’t what?” he asked.
“Now, don’t get upset. But what if he was responsible for the stim epidemic? Maybe he meant for it to be an unsanctioned clinical trial. He could have manufactured the drugs at Oak Knoll and then hidden everything.”
“That’s . . . He wouldn’t . . .”
Karine said, “Perhaps Jefferson couldn’t live with what he’d done. You said he died of radiation poisoning? He certainly had the means to obtain polonium.”
Tosh stepped forward. His hands were balled into fists at his sides. “Jeff Eastmore was a great man. He would never kill himself. Never.”
Karine said, “I always thought so too, but how else do you explain this? The other Health Board members are all policy wonks. They don’t have the skills to pull this off.”
“How do we know it’s not you?” Elena asked.
Karine turned to Victor. Her eyes were large, open, hard. “I didn’t poison him. I hired these flackies to protect you and to protect your family’s company. Ask your aunt. Things didn’t go as planned, but it wasn’t my fault. If you’re looking for a culprit, you have to look further. Who benefits from stims?” Karine nodded at Elena. “Addicts get their fix. Drug pushers profit. The underworld wins. Not me.”
Victor looked from Karine to Elena and back again. “You know about her?”
“I arranged things with the clinic in New Venice, yes. As a favor to Circe. We were trying to help you.”
Elena squared her shoulders. “Your clinics profit off treating addicts.”
Karine said, “If I could wish away your addiction, I would. We tried to help you.”
Elena said, “They chipped me!”
“A precaution. Which paid off, I might add.” Karine smiled.
Elena got in Victor’s face. “Let me kill her. If you let her go, she’ll make sure you’re locked up. Victor, it’s the only option.”
Victor closed his eyes and pictured a solitary island. Waves crashing on a shore. Wind shaking palm trees. Sand shifting in the dunes. Chaotic sounds and motion, blissfully meaningless. Soothing.
He’d come all this way for nothing. He had only a rough idea of what was really behind the stim market. He had no proof that Karine killed Jefferson. He barely knew who he was or what he was capable of anymore.
Victor opened his eyes. They were all look
ing at him.
Elena crossed her arms. Victor felt numb. The one person he cared about more than himself wanted to turn him into a murderer, a monster.
“I need to think,” he said. The room buzzed and hissed.
Karine was either innocent or a crafty killer. Which was it?
Victor fingered the gas bomb in his pocket again.
Tosh strode to the bathroom door, saying, “Let’s talk in here. Fewer ears.”
“It’s okay,” Victor said. “Elena, will you—can I talk to you outside?”
Elena nodded, moved past Karine, and stepped around Victor. She opened the front door, cleared the threshold, and looked at him expectantly.
Victor slammed the door and flipped the dead bolt.
“Hey!” she yelled from the other side.
In a fluid motion, Victor triggered the gas bomb and threw it at Tosh’s feet. White smoke jetted into the room, billowing across the floor. Victor dove to the bed’s edge, grabbed the gas mask, and pulled it over his head. He curled into a ball, blocking the front door.
Tosh tried to pull him away to get outside. Victor tensed, his arms pinning the mask to his face. Tosh tried to pry it off, but his body was wracked by coughs. Victor squirmed, twisted, and kicked his foot up. It connected with Tosh’s belly, and the man sucked in a breath.
Smoke filled the room to the ceiling. The freelancers coughed. Karine screamed, perhaps not realizing it hastened her unconsciousness. She quieted, and her head drooped.
The two figures on the bed writhed. Then they, too, succumbed to the gas.
Tosh dropped to his knees. His hands latched onto Victor’s gas mask. He coughed and pulled more lungfuls of smoke through his mouth. Victor held onto the mask. Tosh cursed, slumped down, and passed out.
The room was quiet. Victor was on his own. It was time for murder. Or perhaps something else.
Chapter 42
From the depths of my future, a dark breath returned and collapsed the lives I hadn’t yet lived into a single path.
Choices that weren’t mine propelled me forward.
Even now that I know the truth, no decision turns in the direction I expect.
—Victor Eastmore’s Apology
Republic of Texas
9 March 1991
Fog-white sleeping-gas particles filled the room’s air like Mesh static. The filter on Victor’s gas mask made it difficult to breathe. Like trying to suck a juicebulb through a too-thin straw.
Victor wondered how long he could hide in this room. Elena was banging on the door. He couldn’t just sit there indefinitely. He tried to open a vidfeed to Ozie and was surprised when the feed request was approved.
Ozie asked, “Laws, Victor, what is on your face?”
“A gas mask. Long story. Did you—”
“Look, can’t talk long. I don’t trust my programs to secure the feed. The King of Las Vegas didn’t like me messing with his MeshSats, and he traced me back to the café. Pearl and I are on the move.”
“Ozie, did you steal the MRS gene sequence from Gene-Us last year?”
Ozie laughed. It sounded genuine to Victor. “Of course not,” Ozie said. “If I had it already, why would I have had you steal it from BioScan?”
Victor said, “Someone broke into Gene-Us. Someone also stole an early version of the XSCT formula from Oak Knoll. That’s what Karine told me, at least.”
“And you believe her?” Ozie asked.
“I don’t know what to think.”
Ozie stroked his chin. “If she didn’t do it, I’ll give you one guess who else might be involved.”
“The King?” Victor said.
Ozie said, “Correct. We’ll get to the bottom of it. Meanwhile, Pearl and I are going to set up somewhere quiet. Private. What are you going to do?”
“Search the kennel. ”
“Let me know what you find. And let us know where you’ll be. Pearl’s got some herbs for you.” Ozie terminated the feed.
Victor sat watching the sleeping-gas eddies curl gently in the lodge room’s still air. He had to find out what had happened to the XSCT compound, and the kennel was the key. Without Karine’s help, though, it would be tough to get past the Corps.
Victor got up, leaned over Tosh’s unconscious body, unzipped his pocket, and took back the data egg. Then he opened the door and stepped outside, leaving it open a crack. He removed the bulky mask from his face and threw it on the ground.
Elena tried to peek inside, but Victor blocked her view. “What the shocks did you do?” she asked.
Victor brushed his sleeves and wondered how much of the sleeping substance had accumulated there. “I bought us some time. I couldn’t think with everyone yelling at me.”
She grabbed his arm. “Did you—”
“No.” Victor shrugged her off. “If I didn’t shut them up, though, I might have killed them.”
Elena looked relieved.
“They’ll be fine,” he said.
She nodded, biting back whatever she really wanted to say. Her eyes were sickly green; even in the fading light, he could see how hard a day it had been for her. He could blame stimsmoke’s effects for running her down or her own bad judgment. He probably looked awful, too. His gaze flicked toward the motel window, but he turned away quickly. He didn’t want to see his reflection.
Victor paced the parking lot and then stopped and looked up at the stars. Only a few dozen peeked through the evening’s dusty veil: Sirius, Betelgeuse, and the more prominent nodes of familiar constellations. Mars and Jupiter bracketed the moon, deceptively equidistant from each other in the sky, but so far apart. Time and distance obscured the rest of the universe.
He turned to Elena. “You wanted me to kill them.”
She flinched as if he’d slapped her. “I didn’t—”
“How could you even suggest it? Ever since I was little, people who hate what I am have attacked me, treated me like I’m a bomb about to explode. You tried to light the fuse.”
She shook her head and backed away. Only a car width separated them, but it could have been a wall of radiation. “I can’t imagine what that’s like. I know you’re a good person, I do,” she said, “but sometimes we have to do a wrong thing for the right reason.”
Victor hung his head. He couldn’t believe what she was saying. “What happened to you?” he asked. “When you joined the Puros, it’s like you gave up the good part of yourself.”
Tears streaked down her cheeks like meteors, catching the lightpole’s glare and sparkling. Her voice was ragged. “I lost that a long time ago.” She wiped her cheeks with her sleeve. “They saved me. I . . . They gave me a reason to keep going.”
Could the Puros and their cause have replaced him in her heart? They were something for her to take care of, a reason to put her needs and problems second.
He saw her clearly now, and kept his mouth shut. There were so many things he might say. He loved her, but they weren’t good for each other. She had to feel complete without him. She had to be happy by herself.
Victor peered in the lodge room. They would probably be unconscious for hours. He nudged the door open to allow the remaining gas to escape. A breeze kicked up, and the air chilled his skin.
“I have to let them go,” Victor said.
Elena said, “But that means they win.”
He sighed. He hated that she argued when his choice had been made. “No, if I kill them, that’s when I lose. There’s no other option.”
“She killed him!”
“She very well could have. But nothing I can do will bring him back, Elena. I refuse to become a killer.”
“I don’t think I could be so forgiving.”
“I’m not forgiving. I’m going to find out the truth and if she did kill him I’m going to make her life a living hell. Or who knows?” Victor raised a hand in priest-like benevolence and met Elena’s gaze. “Someday I may pardon her sins.”
One sole laugh escaped Elena’s lips. Then she wrapped her arms around her chest, l
ooking young, like her life clock had wound backward.
He hugged her.
She pulled away and looked at him with narrowed eyes. “You’re not thinking about going back to SeCa, are you?”
Every minute of his life in SeCa had been contingent on the mercy of people who didn’t understand him. His family had formed an oasis of support, beyond which only suspicion, hostility, and contempt existed. And then they’d hired thugs to keep him under surveillance. No, he would never go back to SeCa, even if he wasn’t reclassified. Life for him there would always be circumscribed by the radius of his family’s wealth, power, and ability to carve out a safe place for him, which would be another kind of prison.
“No. I need to go someplace safe and civilized. SeCa’s off limits, and it’s too dangerous here.” He smiled at her. “I’ve been thinking about moving to an island in the Mediterranean.”
She gaped, then laughed. “Stop joking around.”
Insects began singing all around them. They might have been buzzing the whole time. A slight breeze rustled his hair. Trajectories of dirt painted the pavement, eroding the boundary between city and desert.
Elena said, “Stay here. Please. You’d never have to worry about the Carmichael stuff again.” She looked as if she wanted to reach out and touch him, only she wasn’t sure of herself.
Winds buffeted Victor and Elena with dust and shards of gravel. What to do? The few clothes and supplies he had brought with him could all fit in a small sack. He hadn’t prepared for a journey longer than a week or so. He’d have to find a new source of herbs, a new regime for managing his condition. It would be like starting over again.
That doesn’t sound so bad, he realized.
Amarillo wouldn’t be his final destination. He was sure of that. For a brief time, though, it wouldn’t hurt as a stopover, while he sorted out where to go next.
Elena cocked her head. “Why the goofy smile?”
“It’s nothing. I just—I’ll stay. For a little while, at least.”
***
Inside the room, the haze had dissipated. Victor untied Karine and gently slipped her body down to the floor. Elena brandished Tosh’s bloody knife and cut the ropes that tied Bandit and Lucky to the bed. Searching around the room, she and Victor found the freelancers’ clothes and confiscated belongings and placed them on the beds.
