Ivy felt a slight pressure on her face like a warm breeze. Then she experienced a feeling of slow vertigo like the onset of a shot of liquor on a perfectly empty stomach. Somehow, instead of pushing her back into bed, the feeling seemed to be pulling her to her feet. As she stood up, an electricity of pleasure started in her head and conducted down to her toes. Her entire body was tingling.
She went outside. Her nightgown, a long white teeshirt with a cartoon sheep wearing bedroom slippers, was so sheer that she felt every breeze on her skin. The freshly trimmed grass in her gated community felt cold and wet under her feet as she made her way to the guard booth. When the guard came out to meet her, Ivy began to jog toward the gate on her bare feet.
“Hey, Ms. Cavatica! Are you sleepwalking again?” He shouted to her.
Ivy didn’t answer him. Instead, she increased her pace until she was running full speed toward the condo gate. Before the guard could say anything else, she leaped into the air and latched her hands onto the very top of the gate. Then, like a grandstanding gymnast, she swung her legs backwards until they were over the gate. In another smooth gesture, she landed on the other side as delicately as if she weighed six ounces.
She ran with an inexhaustible supply of energy and felt as though she could hear and smell for miles. The neighborhood around her consisted of mostly abandoned and boarded-up factories. Faint lights from battery-powered lamps and small campfires speckled among the empty stories of steel and concrete. She slowed down for a moment as she heard tires screech and people shouting several miles away. Even at that great distance, she could smell the burned rubber.
She continued to walk across the city on her bare feet with every step becoming more enjoyable and sensual. Raising her arms to her side, she started to twirl like a figure skater, jumping into the air and landing as effortlessly as a sparrow. The act got the attention of a few men in a pickup truck that happened to be driving by.
“Damn, bitch, what are you on?” The driver asked through the window as the truck kept pace with her. “You look like you’re having a better time than we are.” The man was in his early thirties and had the tired eyes and bad complexion of a serious drinker. He was accompanied by another man who had a patchy beard, reddish cheeks and wore a trucker’s hat. That man didn’t say anything and seemed content to stare at Ivy like she was a rival gang member.
In the backseat, a little boy was asleep with his head propped up on a bag of laundry. When Ivy looked at them without responding, the man with the bad skin and sunken eyes told her, “We’re being nice to you, bitch. You better return the favor.”
Ivy smirked back at them while the two men’s eyes scanned her body under the nightshirt. She stepped closer to the truck.
“You look like you’re having a good time,” the driver said to her while he stroked the uneven growth of hair on his chin. “My buddy and me are taking my son out for his thirteenth birthday and we’re looking to make some memories.” He asked her, “Why don’t you hop into the back?”
Ivy obliged and took a seat in the back of the pickup truck next to the man’s son, who was still sleeping soundly with his head against the laundry.
“Wake up, you little turd!” The driver shouted to the boy in back. “The party is starting!” He grabbed a small bag of trash from the floor of the passenger seat and threw it at the sleeping child. The kid began to stir and open his eyes. “Look what your daddy found for you,” the man told him.
The boy looked very confused when he saw Ivy. He looked utterly mystified when he noticed that she was wearing only a large teeshirt. “Hello,” he said as he rubbed at his eyes.
Ivy smiled and nodded back without a word.
“That’s it,” the boy’s father smiled. “Get to know each other.”
The other man in the truckers hat started to laugh. “Get to know each other real well,” he added before laughing even harder.
“You see,” the driver said as he made eye contact with Ivy in the rearview mirror. “It’s my boy’s birthday. He’s becoming a man and, as his father, I need to teach him to be one. To be perfectly honest,” he went on, as though some sort of genuine confession was coming, “I’m worried that that this godless city turned him into a queer. Needless to say, my son will not be sucking on any dicks while his father has anything to say about it.”
His son looked very afraid and averted his eyes to the floor of the truck.
“It’s a good thing you have a father that loves you, boy,” the man went on to his son. “Mine would have never helped me this way. That man didn’t give a shit at all.”
The boy’s hands were shaking and he slid even farther away from Ivy. He looked at her nightgown and her bare legs. Then he started to cry.
“Christ I was afraid of this,” the boy’s father said. “Sometimes I wonder if that boy’s mom didn’t fuck around on me. Because I don’t know how I could raise such a pussy. It ain’t in my genes. I find you a gorgeous white girl and you cower like a limp-dick little bitch.” He started to get angrier as he thought about it. He slapped his palm against the dash and his voice got louder. He pulled the car over. “You little shit,” he said as he turned around and slapped his son in the face. “You better man up and turn this shit around. You better be balls deep in a hot minute.”
“Come on, kid,” said the other man in the trucker hat. “Shit or get off the pot.”
Ivy was still perfectly silent as she sat with a comfortable smile. The little boy seemed too afraid to even look at her.
“Come on!” the father shouted to his son. “Grab a titty or two and get started! The bitch isn’t going to be high as a kite forever and I’m not paying for a god damned hooker!”
The little boy grabbed for the door latch and tried to fight his way out of the truck. The man in the trucker hat caught him by the neck of his teeshirt. “We got some performance anxiety on our hands,” the man said.
The boy’s father seemed far less understanding and pulled the boy back to his seat by the hair. “Listen,” his father told him while looking him straight in the eye, “if you dishonor your father right now, he’s going to put a hurting on you. It’s gonna be a much bigger hurting than anything you’re used to. You understand me, boy? So you better get down to some god damned fucking and prove you aren’t a faggot right now.” He turned to Ivy, who still seemed strangely at ease, and pointed his finger at her. “And you, snow white,” he said. “If you can’t get his little dick hard, I’m breaking your jaw!”
The boy tried again for the door latch and his father caught him by the hair. “That’s it,” his father told him, “you’re not coming home tonight. I’m telling your mother you vanished like the other kids!”
Ivy sprang into action and grabbed the boy’s father by both ears. She sent his head into a spin so fast that the features of his face blurred together. By the third or fourth rotation, the skin and tissue that held the man’s head to his body split like an overstretched garbage bag. Blood pumped from his neck onto every surface of the truck.
The man in the trucker hat fought as hard as he could to escape but the blood made the door latch too slippery to grasp. Ivy just looked at him for a moment. Then she smirked at him, saying, “You’re going to help me practice.”
The man in the trucker hat fought even harder to get out the door but everything was too slippery. He tried screaming for help.
Ivy closed her eyes and put her palms together in a sort of meditation. She started to hum a tune like the one that Bernard had taught her earlier. The man started calling out for God to save him.
At that point, Ivy’s entire body started to fade and become transparent. There was a loud snap and she was gone.
Suddenly, the man in the trucker hat exploded into bloody bits and a fine mist. A tropical rainstorm of blood painted the entire inside of the truck. Ivy had teleported inside the man and now, she was bursting through what was left of his body. When she realized what she had accomplished, her bloody face
radiated a sense of accomplishment.
“I did it!” She shouted, wiping pieces of the man off her face. “I teleported through matter! Even Dade Harkenrider can’t do that!”
The little boy covered his face with his hands. He was petrified beyond the effort for a third escape attempt. The dead man’s son just cowered in the far corner of the truck. When Ivy looked at him, he began to hyperventilate. Just as he opened his mouth to let out a tidal wave of a scream, he fainted.
Ivy picked him up and brought the passed out little boy out of the truck on her right shoulder. She was amazed at her new physical strength and the ease with which she picked up the boy. Blood was draining from the doors of the truck onto the pavement. She cradled the boy in her arms.
Holding the thirteen-year-old boy like an infant, she walked down the dilapidated stretch of LA road, toward the oversized moon on the horizon. “You don’t need to be afraid anymore,” she whispered to the kid. He was still fast asleep. “I promise that we’re going to take good care of you. My King and I are going to make everything better. I promise.”
The boy suddenly woke up, saw Ivy’s face and began screaming. She set him down and he ran away as fast as he could without looking back.
Chapter 15
Hydrofluoric
The following evening after work, Ann Marie met her mom at the Pink Pelican. Lori Bandini was already waiting, sitting in their usual booth when her daughter arrived. A storm was headed toward Palos Verdes and the wind was throwing chunks of palm tree around outside. In the distance off the coast, lightning lit up the guts of black clouds. When Ann Marie sat down, she heard a crash of a wave followed by the loud hiss of the surf coming up the beach.
“Wow,” she said to her mom. “The ocean sounds like it’s going to come into the restaurant any second.” She looked out the window, toward the black ocean. Her mom wasn’t paying attention and was instead focused on a message coming through on her mobile phone. “Is it the mystery man?” Ann Marie asked her. “Normally you at least notice when I sit down.”
“I’m sorry,” Lori said without looking up from the phone. “He’s just so funny. The man has the most devilish sense of humor.”
“Does this mean you’re in love?” Asked Ann Marie in an unsmiling tone. “Again?”
“This is different. Not like those jackasses Bobby and Petey. They were little boys. It’s a whole different thing being with a man, an actual man.”
“I take it that you’re serious with this guy then.”
“I want it to be,” Lori said, “but I don’t know how he feels. We’ve been seeing a lot of each other but,” she hesitated, “it’s been very physical. Very physical. The man is obviously hot for me but I don’t know where we stand.”
Ann Marie had no direct experience to guide her in giving advice, so she decided to just ask basic questions. “Have you talked to him about it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because we haven’t had time.”
“Huh?”
“He never takes his hands off of me long enough to ever talk about anything.”
“That’s wonderful,” said Ann Marie, not hiding her disgust at the imagery. “Maybe that’s the problem.”
Lori Bandini considered her daughter’s point before taking a swig of her vodka tonic. “I don’t know where the time with him goes. Sometimes it’s like a dream. I have to remember to force myself to bring it up next time.”
“How hard is it to remember to bring up the status of your relationship?”
“It is quite hard when he starts doing what he does.”
“Stop it, mom.”
“I think I might be in love. I love the way he talks. I love how smart he is. I love everything about him. I even love his dog and I don’t even like dogs. Some kind of strange breed. Goes with him everywhere. I don’t remember what he called him. Cutest little thing. He wants to take us all over the world, baby.”
“I’m glad you’re happy, mom. You deserve something nice coming your way.”
“I do. Don’t I.” She answered. “I guess I never really thought that I deserved a nice man. I was convinced they died out in the eighteen hundreds. You’re not going to be mad if I get married. Are you?”
Ann Marie tried not to show her discomfort at the idea. Instead, she used the opportunity to take a break from the conversation. “The waitress is taking forever,” she said. “I’m gonna go to the bar for my soda.”
When she got to the bar, the young man behind the counter seemed to recognize her. Her mom had made her a regular at the place apparently. He smiled, saying, “It’s the genius girl.”
It made her uncomfortable and her eyes shied away from him. “Not so much, sometimes,” she said over the bar noise.
“What’s it like,” the young man started to ask, “working for Dr. Death?”
“He’s not...” She started to argue before abandoning the effort. “It’s OK. It’s a job.” She grabbed her diet coke. Something wanted her to keep Dade Harkenrider all to herself.
...
In the middle of the night, Bernard Mengel strolled across the grounds of the Asylum Corporation’s lower campus with his DeathStalker following close behind. Its eyes beamed red at Bernard as it studied his every move, waiting for Bernard to step even an iota out of line. The old man turned to face the drone and scowled at the machine in disgust. The drone seemed to shoot him a challenging look back, flashing its eyes in a way that certainly looked aggressive.
“I hate you, you god damned machine!” Bernard told it. “If only you were flesh and blood, I would take you bloody apart.”
A long, white spark shot out from the DeathStalker’s tail and struck Bernard in the scrotum. This sent him into a rage and he teleported ten feet away. He was met in a fraction of a second by the DeathStalker. Its red eyes peered back at Bernard as if to say: you’re going to have to do better than that, old man.
“You craven little bastard!” Bernard shouted as he reacted to the electric shock. “You’re as bad as your bloody creator!” He stopped in the middle of the courtyard and looked around at the neighboring black buildings. Bernard’s mind seemed to be calculating something. He looked at the drone, saying, “I’ve had about enough of you getting in the way of my fun.” Then he was visited by an idea that made a smile creep up in the corner of his mouth. The sign in front of him pointed to the Asylum Corporation Computer Foundry. He said, “Follow me, you infernal device.”
The microelectronic foundry was totally automated and, during that late hour, the machines were busy processing silicon wafers. Mechanical arms were dunking the fledgling computer processors into various chemical tanks. The shiny wafers, each about the size of a vinyl record, were passed between robotic stations like relay batons. It looked like the machines were performing a nighttime circus for the entertainment of no one.
Bernard walked through the automatic doors with the DeathStalker following only a few inches behind him. The drone scanned the room, catching every moving part of the factory. This sent its mantis-like head into a whirlwind twirl of motion. The DeathStalker checked back on Bernard every so often, but it seemed as though the factory environment had it confused.
“Follow me,” Bernard told it as he weaved through the photolithography machines and chemical tanks. His path seemed to lead nowhere. The DeathStalker’s eyes followed every move in the factory but stuck close to him. He stopped in front of a clear plastic tank of hydrofluoric acid, where silicon wafers were dunked for surface etching. The tank stood five feet above the floor. It had a mechanical lid that opened every fifteen seconds for the robot arms to submerge the wafers.
While Bernard stood in front of the hydrofluoric acid bath, one of the factory robots rolled over with a stack of silicon wafers. The lid to the tank flipped open to reveal the rather harmless looking clear liquid. Signs all over the area testified to the danger of the tank’s contents.
A long syringe with a needle
thick enough for knitting was kept in a glass cabinet for the unlikely event of an exposure. The sign by the syringe read: calcium gluconate, take within 2 minutes of exposure to avoid death.
Just before the lid to the tank started to close, Bernard grabbed the DeathStalker by the kicking legs. It stung him with electric shocks all over his body. He kept a tenuous hold on the thing and very quickly, he got it to the top of the tank and dropped the drone inside. The lid closed and Bernard jumped onto the top of the tank. He held the lid closed with the entire weight of his body while the DeathStalker fought to free itself from the acid bath.
It splashed and kicked, before eventually sinking to the bottom. Bernard watched it through the clear plastic as its red eyes flashed with fury. It tried to rip through the walls but the acid had already circumvented its armor. The hydrofluoric acid was eating away at the DeathStalker’s microprocessor.
It stared back at Bernard as its red eyes grew evermore faint. Then, it just rusted at the bottom like wrecked ship.
Chapter 16
SpiderWebFace
“It’s probably just a glitch,” Ann Marie said to Dade as Asylum One drove them to the microelectronic foundry down in the lower grounds. She could tell he was frantic over his DeathStalker and wanted to make him feel better. “Maybe it’s just an antenna problem.”
“It’s a Bernard problem,” answered Dade without looking at her. “I know it.”
The truck pulled through the security checkpoint as they made their way to the computer factory. Dade didn’t take his eyes off the road. He seemed fanatical enough to teleport out the window before the truck even came to a stop.
Ann Marie's Asylum (Master and Apprentice Book 1) Page 22
