by Tricia Owens
Elliott grimaced and glanced at me. “He’s blackmailing you?”
“Sounds like it.” I breathed deeply to keep myself calm. “What does he want me to do?”
“‘Suspicious killings have erupted around the city and are being blamed on a virus,’” he read. “‘This is not the work of a virus. Find the killer and end him to receive the generous bounty. Do not allow your work to be traced back to the Sinistera.’” Elliott turned the sheet over. “That’s it. It’s not signed, but I recognize the handwriting.”
“Mr. Tower,” I confirmed, noting that Elliott was taking this pretty well now that he’d gotten over his initial shock. I took back the note and folded it. “Like I said, I need you to keep this to yourself.”
He laughed uneasily. “After reading his threat to you I’d be crazy to say a thing. Who knows what he’s got on me. Embarrassing stuff would be the least of it.”
“Right.”
“So, um, are you going to do it? Try to find this killer? And what did Mr. Tower mean by ‘end him’?”
My smile was made of plastic and far more innocent than I. “I have no idea, Elliott. I guess I’ll figure it out as I go.”
Chapter 8
I’d just learned that my boss had hired me to assassinate someone. I didn’t kid myself that ‘end him’ meant anything other than ending their life.
Being asked to kill someone was different than actually going through with it, though. I wasn’t a killer. I was aware that my parents had killed people during the war and my grandmother had, too. In fact, as one of the seven primary freedom fighters she’d tallied up dozens of kills.
But that was war time. Little that was justified then could be excused at the present. Not to mention I wasn’t keen on hurting anyone just because someone offered me money to do it. So I faced a terrible choice: reject the job and lose the chance to care for my grandmother, essentially condemning her to the Crossing, or take the job and trade someone’s life for hers. Exhaustion claimed me before I could make any decisions.
I didn’t wake until noon, and then only because I heard Housekeeping moving in the halls and knocking on other doors. Recalling the intimidating members of that particular department, I got ready quickly, not wanting to be caught in my underwear by them.
When I entered the downstairs lobby, I was heartened to see actual guests checking in, as in they had luggage and carried the happy optimism of people beginning a vacation. I wasn’t able to speak to Sheridan because she was busy helping them, so I vowed to stop by the desk on my way back to see what more I could squeeze out of her.
Outside, it was a brilliant, sunny day. The contrast with the cool, night-like interior of the Sinistera was stark. It was like emerging from a deep cave. Or a prison. I rubbed my arms briskly, mentally rubbing the sunlight into my skin. Then I hopped on my scooter to run my errands.
First, using the money that Tower had advanced me, I hit up a mall to purchase more work clothes, boots, and toiletries. Then I browsed the shelves of a charity shop.
Inanimate matter transfiguration had its limits. Matter was matter. I couldn’t meddle a teapot into a refrigerator, for instance. The mass had to be equal or nearly so; rearranging the molecules could provide some leeway on that. Also, occasionally the immense number of chemical reactions required, and the lack of necessary molecular compounds, made the end product unreliable. Breakage happened frequently. I’d even had things explode in my hands during class because I’d inadvertently overworked their molecules.
So I bought all sorts of odds and ends in a variety of materials and sizes, figuring I had no idea what I faced in hunting down this strange killer but wanting to be prepared with tools and weapons as needed. And that determined my next stop: the Center for Living Resistance.
The Center was, in fact, only an oversized RV parked each day in different spots around the city. It was driven and run by Wolfgang Wagner.
I parked my scooter beside the sandwich board near the RV’s side door. The board promised that visitors to the Center would learn the truth about deception and corruption in Victory City, not just ‘what THEY want you to believe.’ The RV itself was painted with huge, colorful graphics depicting fists punching through a wall of gun-wielding soldiers and dynamic speech bubbles containing ‘truth’ and ‘justice’ flying around in comic book fashion.
When I leaned in the doorway to peer inside the RV, I was unsurprised to find it empty of all but Wolfgang. The Center, to no one’s great surprise and as a point of pride to Wolfgang, wasn’t a recommended visit by the city’s tourism bureau.
“If people lose faith in the Resistance then they’ve condemned themselves to be the grease easing the gears of tyranny,” he told me when he looked up from the metal contraption he was attempting to piece together. The detritus covered the entirety of what was the dining table. Wolfgang peered at me through the magnified lens of a loupe. “People are afraid to fight and would rather be ground up and spat out along with their neighbors.”
“You’ve just now figured that out?” I retorted as I walked past shadow boxes on the walls where the kitchenette cabinets used to hang.
The displays were filled with Wolfgang’s proof that the government had lied to us about the war and continued to lie about it to this day. We shared some common ground, but his views were far more extreme than mine. He believed, for instance, that every soldier and combatant who had died during the war was still alive, kept frozen in hibernation to be resuscitated for the next war.
The idea sickened me and we’d argued about it ad nauseum. Wolfgang didn’t know that I was the daughter and granddaughter of two sets of war heroes. I don’t know that it would have changed his opinions even if he had, which was why our friendship endured. He wasn’t awed by history. He was suspicious of it.
“So what is that?” I asked as I paused beside the table and tried to make sense of what he was working on.
“A spy satellite. It goes into orbit around a house, records everything and sends it to a central command. Everything you say. All recorded. These little bastards orbit every single house in Victory City. I’m telling you, nothing is private. It’s why I live in this RV. They can’t nail me down if I keep moving.”
It looked to me like he was working on a travel alarm clock but I didn’t say as much. Being a member of the Resistance led to thin skin and easily bruised feelings.
I checked the rest of the place out, noting the new displays he’d hung up with their blurry photos, large red text, and numerous question marks which were scattered everywhere like conspiracy theory confetti. Wolfgang had been stewing in all this for decades. He was probably in his fifties, obese and balding, but with unexpectedly sweet, almost cherubic features. His face was deceptive, luring the unwary into conversation with him in which he bombarded them with all the reasons why death would come at the hands of the government and when it did a literal bill would follow. Needless to say, Wolfgang did not pay his taxes.
At one display, I paused. I studied it every time I visited. In this one display was a photograph that, if discovered by the government, would ensure Wolfgang was locked in prison for the rest of his life. I’d warned him not to hang it where any stranger could see it, but he did so defiantly. I understood and empathized with that defiance, but he was taking a tremendous risk.
The photo was a single frame taken from security camera footage positioned downtown. Three-quarters of the frame showed the water-filled street, floating cars, and debris from destroyed buildings. Crouched on the roof of one of those cars was a thing.
I shivered every time I looked at it. Using the car for reference I judged the thing to be at least seven feet tall, though slender. The toes on its two feet were as long as human fingers and the creature’s two arms ended in wide hands sprouting six fingers each. Its eyes were enormous, taking up half its face. They were filmed with a white membrane so that the creature appeared to be blind, though history proved that that hadn’t been the case. Beneath two vertical slashes that serv
ed as a nose, its sickle-shaped mouth was parted, revealing three bladed front teeth.
Evidence of Dr. Febrero’s ice demons had been destroyed along with most data associated with the war, but somehow this one frame had survived and found its way into the hands of someone who understood its value. Wolfgang recognized—as did I—that this creature couldn’t have been embedded in the ice at the planet’s poles. Its silver skin was thin and smooth like a reptile’s, making it ill-suited to withstand the coldest areas on Earth.
The challenge for Wolfgang and me was what to do with such knowledge. Who were our allies? Who would dare use this information to make waves?
For now, those questions remained unanswered.
“I need your opinion on something,” I said as I wandered through the RV, my attention kept on the displays so as to free Wolfgang from having to make eye contact. “You’ve heard about the strange killings that have been happening? The ones caused by the virus?”
“Virus. That’s a laugh and a half. Who came up with that one? Let me guess: high-ranking officials.”
“I don’t actually know where that theory came from. I guess with the killers forgetting what they’ve done immediately after—”
“That’s another laugh,” Wolfgang said with a snort as he continued to tinker.
I looked back at him, staring at the top of his bald head. “You think they do remember? That they’re lying?”
“Or cuckoo.” He paused to twirl his index finger around his temple.
“But two of the killers seemed rational enough. A mother and a businessman—you can’t convince me they went temporarily insane.”
“Didn’t say that, did I?” He peered up with that one magnified eye again. “I said they were cuckoo. Working at the behest of the government. Sleeper agents.”
I suppressed a sigh. His theory was less than helpful. “I need legitimate help, Wolfie. I’m working on something.”
“For yourself?”
“It’s for a job,” I admitted.
“Ha! Then the answers can be found with whoever hired you. What’s in it for them? Who does the job hurt? Who does it help? Remember, they’re all in on it to some degree.”
“I can’t immediately accuse everyone of being ‘in on it’ if I don’t know what ‘it’ is.”
“Even if they are in on it?” he asked me with an arch look. He reached up and pried the loupe out of his fleshy orbital socket. His eyebrows, light brown and bushy as though to make up for the lack of hair on his head, curled protectively over his eyes. “What’s the job?”
“I’m supposed to stop them,” I said vaguely. “The killers.” But even as I said it I recalled that Tower had written ‘him’ as though he believed that one man was behind the attacks. But that had to be a mistake. It didn’t make sense.
“So ask yourself who’s being hurt by these murders…besides the people getting their faces eaten off and so on,” Wolfie added with a dark chuckle. “It’s always about money or power, Arrow. Someone’s business is being affected or their reputation is stained every time these attacks happen.”
I made a face as I tried to apply those conditions to the job and to Tower. The problem was that I knew next to nothing about the man and what would hurt or help him. He could be the head of the city’s most powerful mob family and I would have no idea.
The RV rocked slightly as a middle-aged man climbed up the stairs and leaned through the doorway. He looked around, brow creased.
“You’re here for the truth, aren’t you?” Wolfgang asked him urgently. “You’ve finally realized that we’re living in a world constructed of lies.”
“Uh, well, I just—I thought this was one of those mobile health clinics,” the man said. “I wanted to get my blood pressure taken.”
“Your blood isn’t only blood, you know,” Wolfgang said, half-rising from his seat. “They injected us from birth with genetic markers to keep tabs on—”
“I’m good, thanks,” the man said and ducked out again.
Wolfgang sank back into his seat with a muttered, “Another spy. They’re always checking on me. They think I don’t know.”
“Wolfie,” I said, trying to steer him back on course, “about these murders.”
When he merely shrugged, disinterested, I baited the hook. “This is important to me because I think someone is trying to frame me for murder.”
I all but heard the gears screech to a halt in Wolfgang’s brain and then rocket into motion again at lightning speed. “Someone’s framing you?”
“The police claim I killed my school counselor. Before he was murdered, the guy helped me get a job which led to this one. I think it all might be connected.”
“Then we look at the victims,” he said excitedly. “If the killers seem random, then their victims might be the common denominator. Why did they need to be killed? Why now?”
“One was a mailman,” I reminded him, skeptical. “The other a secretary. And the homeless guy attacked two teenagers. You can’t convince me a pair of teenagers were involved in a conspiracy worth killing over, Wolfie.”
“But what of their parents, hmm?” He pointed at me as he grinned with triumph. “It’s all about the web, Arrow. Everyone’s trapped in it. Everyone’s connected. Don’t be a fly. Be the spider. Walk the web and find out who knows who and what. The government claims the war ended fifteen years ago, but the spider has enough eyes to see the truth.”
“Wolfie,” I said sternly, “the war did end.”
His eyes lit up with the look of a man granted his greatest wish.
“Did it? Or did they perpetuate the world’s biggest cover-up? The Ultimate Lie? Why do you think they drugged the so-called freedom fighters until they were drooling vegetables and killed off anyone else who knew too much? They were possible leaks about the secret, ongoing war.”
Usually I managed to steer conversation away from my grandmother and the other fighters. Wolfgang had strong opinions about what their true mission had been and it was completely wrong. This time, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut.
“The fighters were drugged with suppressants because they were too powerful,” I argued. “The scientists had gone overboard when they empowered them. It was their miscalculations that—”
Wolfie waved that off. “The fighters were never that powerful. The government misled the public to believe that just so people would think we had a chance and would donate more money to the cause.”
I wanted badly to argue with him and set him straight, especially about my grandmother, but I reeled in my careening emotions. It might feel good to prove Wolfgang wrong, but I would be betraying my grandmother’s condition to him and that wasn’t something I was willing to do when her life was at stake.
“Why are we even talking about the war?” I demanded.
“Because it’s our favorite topic?” he asked, completely serious.
I snorted. “Up until the moment the government catches you.”
He nodded gravely. Wolfgang expected every day to be thrown into a van and driven to a detention center to be tortured.
“How about I pay a visit to the businessman that murdered his secretary?” I suggested. “He’s been charged with second-degree murder like the other two, but he managed to make bail. I think you should come with me and make sure he doesn’t lie to me.”
Wolfgang looked intrigued, as I knew he would be. He tended to make people extremely uncomfortable and that was terrible for making friends or getting dates but it was useful during an interrogation.
“He’ll definitely attempt to deceive you,” he warned me.
“I think so, too. So will you help me?”
He nodded sharply. “You need me. Let’s go.”
~~~~~
My scooter hitched a ride in the RV’s bedroom. I sat up front with Wolfgang as he drove us into the well-heeled neighborhood where the accused businessman, Eric Snelling, lived. On the way there, I meddled a metal water bottle into a dart gun and hung it at my waist. Just in case. Wo
lfgang noted it with a grunt of approval.
Eric Snelling lived in a mansion surrounded by a wall with a security gate. He likely never saw his neighbors, nor they him. A perfect situation for our unannounced visit.
“I don’t think we’re getting in through the front door,” I said quietly to Wolfgang as we squatted behind some bushes. Across from us stood a solid-looking gate with a camera and speaker set-up. “How do you feel about using your power for good?”
He snorted like a bulldog. “I don’t use it for any other reason…which is why I never use it.” He glanced at me. “This time might be a reason to.”
With me leading the way, we crept around the property. Fifteen foot tall hedges ran along the wall enclosing Snelling’s property, making it easy for Wolfgang and me to reach the back wall unobtrusively. Once there, he took a deep breath, as though to relax himself. He even rolled his head on his shoulders and swung his arms back and forth, though what being limber had to do with anything that was coming next I had no idea. He had his process, though, so I let him do what he wanted.
As I kept a wary eye pointed toward the street, Wolfgang stepped up to the back wall and pressed the knuckles of both fists to the stucco.
“Any time now,” I muttered.
“I’m an artist. Don’t interrupt an artist,” he mumbled back.
I felt a change in the air pressure that was strong enough to slightly push my body away from Wolfgang and the wall. Then a nearly inaudible whump! filled my ears and the pressure relented. I turned in time to watch Wolfgang squeeze his bulk through the hole that he’d blasted through the wall.
“If you would have gone to school for that you’d be the most powerful Kinetic Energy specialist in the city,” I told him.
He rolled his eyes as I stepped over the broken chicken wire and plaster to join him. “Being stamped and registered by the government isn’t worth learning how to blast delicate holes on command. I’m a blunt instrument for myself. I’m no one’s tool.”
“Humans aren’t registered, Wolfie, only cohabs.”
