"And no murder weapon left behind." Nevada was thinking out loud. "No bloody footprints, no fingerprints, no nothing."
"Tell me." Sinaloa flipped the red-lined bullfighter's cape over his shoulder with a flourish. "How is your first investigation going? Can you tell us who murdered Missouri?"
Nevada spotted the edge of a bloody symbol sticking out from under the toilet paper wrapped around Yukon's forearm. Tearing away the paper, he saw that there were two symbols underneath--two numerals carved into Yukon's flesh.
Two nines, carved side by side. Together, they made the number "ninety-nine."
Just as the number one hundred had been cut into poor Missouri's flesh.
"Well?" said Sinaloa. "Can you tell us who murdered Missouri?"
"Same person who murdered Yukon," said Nevada. "And there'll be more to come."
"What makes you say that?" said Sinaloa.
"Because he's counting down from a hundred," said Nevada. "A hundred of us."
*****
Nevada sat at the end of the Reflecting Pool, gazing across the still water at the Lincoln Memorial. Antarctica, who was sitting beside him, had kicked off her pretty crystal shoes and dropped her pale, slender feet into the water.
The ripples from her feet disturbed the scenes playing over the pool's surface--visions of life beyond the digital domain in True America. Men, women, and children worked and played in softly swirling images, flickering across the sunlit water. It was here that the e-reps and e-sens came to see the faces of the people they served, strengthening their resolve to preserve the American dream.
"You're sure the killer won't stop?" said Antarctica.
"There are one hundred e-reps," said Nevada. "The first victim was marked one hundred, and the second was ninety-nine. Ninety-eight is next, then ninety-seven...all the way to zero."
Antarctica frowned. "I can't believe the Developers are letting this happen. Can't they just reprogram the source code to bring back the dead and stop the murders?"
"Maybe not." Nevada stroked the dark stubble on his chin. "Maybe they've lost control of the simulation. Or maybe they're letting it happen."
"But it doesn't seem possible." Antarctica shook her head and gazed into the water. "None of this does."
"Got that right." Nevada stretched out on his side, propping an elbow on the cement. Even with everything that was going on, he felt a sense of peace in this place.
Of all the places in the digital realm, the Reflecting Pool would always be the most special to him. It was here, five years ago, that he'd last seen Idaho before she'd disappeared from his life.
It was here that he'd last made love to her.
"What about Looking Glass's clues?" said Antarctica. "Do they mean anything?"
"I'm sure they do," said Nevada, "but I haven't figured them out yet."
"'When is one one-hundred?'" Antarctica narrowed her silver eyes. "He must have meant the one hundred e-reps of Congress, right?"
"Probably," said Nevada.
"Or he might have meant me." Antarctica's eyes widened. "I'm the one-hundredth e-rep, from the
one-hundredth state. What if I'm the next victim?"
"I don't think so," said Nevada. "The killer's following reverse order of importance. Missouri was speaker of the House, number one in terms of power...and the killer counted him last, as number one hundred."
"And Yukon was minority leader." Antarctica sounded relieved. "Second most powerful. So you don't think I'm next, Nevada?"
"No, sweetheart." said Nevada. "I don't think you're on the killer's radar right now."
Just then, without warning, Antarctica shot forward and disappeared under the water.
Heart pounding, Nevada scrambled to the edge of the pool and stared at the spot where she'd gone under. Since the water was murky with projected scenes of True America, he couldn't see below the surface. No trace of Antarctica or whatever had pulled her in was visible.
Then, suddenly, one pale hand broke the surface. Nevada grabbed it and pulled up hard...but whatever had hold of Antarctica wouldn't let go.
Leaning out further, Nevada clamped both hands around Antarctica's wrist and pulled harder than before. The thing in the pool resisted...then finally released its grip. Nevada hauled Antarctica free with one great heave.
The two of them tumbled back on the edge of the pool. Nevada cradled her in his arms as she coughed up water and gasped for breath.
Her silver eyes flickered open and met his gaze. "Guess what?" Her voice was shaking. "I think I'm on the killer's radar after all."
Nevada stroked the platinum blonde hair from her eyes. "Did you get a look at who pulled you in?"
Antarctica shook her head. "All I know is, their touch was beyond ice cold. It was too cold even for me."
Nevada stared at the surface of the pool. He wondered who had attacked Antarctica, and why.
Maybe the killer's hit list was more random than Nevada had thought, or it followed a more complicated formula. Maybe Antarctica knew something that could lead to a break in the case.
Or maybe, a more ominous motive had fueled the attack.
"We've got to get back," said Nevada. "Back to the House."
Antarctica frowned. "Why?"
"I don't think you were a target," said Nevada. "I think you were a diversion."
*****
Pieces of the great state of Zacatecas were scattered all over the House chamber--head on the flagpole, foot on the Speaker's bench, arm on the podium. Blood was spattered everywhere, and ragged shreds of flesh stuck to the furniture and walls.
Many of the e-reps were also stained with their colleague's remains--including Connecticut, as she explained to Nevada what had happened.
"Half an hour ago, the power went out," said Connecticut. "We heard Zacatecas screaming, but we didn't know why until the lights came back up five minutes later. We found him...like this." She looked down at her bloody hands and clothes.
Suddenly, Sinaloa stormed toward them, scowling with rage. "Arrest this man!" He grabbed hold of Nevada's wrist and wrenched it into the air. "He killed my Mexican hermano!"
"That's enough," said Connecticut. "Let him go."
"Who among us was mysteriously absent when Zacatecas was murdered?" Sinaloa shook Nevada's arm for the crowd. "This man! He only reappeared when the killing was finished."
Antarctica pushed forward. "I was with him when this happened! Nevada didn't kill anyone."
"Then what was he doing?" said Sinaloa.
"Saving my life!" said Antarctica. "I was attacked and nearly drowned at the Reflecting Pool!" With one hand, she held up strands of her long hair, which was still wet. With her other hand, she held up her soaked white fur wrap.
"How do we know for sure?" Sinaloa locked eyes with her. "Perhaps you were his accomplice in this atrocity."
Fed up with the grandstanding, Nevada tore his wrist free of Sinaloa's grip. "Enough infighting. This is exactly what they want."
"'They' who?" said Sinaloa.
"You're right about one thing," said Nevada. "More than one person is involved in these murders."
With that, Nevada headed for the front of the chamber. The crowd of e-reps silently parted to make way for him.
"Someone attacked Antarctica at the Reflecting Pool while the murders were underway here." Nevada walked up to the podium, where Zacateca's left arm rested. "That tells us at least two people were involved."
Nevada gazed at the severed arm on the podium, its hand curled into a loose fist. "In five short minutes, power was cut to the House, Zacatecas was torn to pieces, and power was restored. That's a lot for one person to do alone in that amount of time."
"You should know," said Sinaloa.
Nevada turned the arm over. "In those same five minutes, someone also did this." Nevada held up the arm for the crowd to see. "They cut open Zacatecas' sleeves and carved the number '98' into his flesh."
The watching e-reps gasped and mumbled.
"The countdown co
ntinues," said Nevada, "unless we start working together and find who did this."
Sinaloa glowered at Nevada for a long moment. Then, he spun and marched up the aisle toward the doors.
"You're right," he said over his shoulder. "It's time to get some answers."
Nevada put down Zacatecas' severed arm. "How do you plan to do that?"
"By making a call," said Sinaloa.
"To who?" said Nevada.
"Who else?" said Sinaloa. "The Developers."
*****
Sinaloa charged across the vast rotunda beneath the dome of the Capitol building and stopped on a single glowing tile in the middle of the room. Nevada and Antarctica, who had followed him from the House chamber, stood to one side.
When Sinaloa placed his right hand over his heart and recited the Pledge of Allegiance, a shaft of light burst up from the glowing tile, striking the middle of the dome. Smoothly, the dome split on one side and rolled open, revealing a starry night sky overhead.
The shaft of light from the tile spiked straight up, never dimming as it shot into the heavens. This was the holy connection to the godlike Developers in the world outside, the fabled soulpipe.
"I've never actually seen a soul call before." Antarctica's voice was soft and slow with wonder. "Will the Developers answer?"
Nevada shrugged. The same question was foremost in his own mind at that moment.
Since the murders, the role of House Speaker had fallen on Sinaloa, which qualified him to make the soul call. As a rule, though, the unpredictable Developers didn't answer every call, even from a qualified Speaker.
In the blazing light of the soulpipe, Sinaloa gazed upward and spread his arms wide. "O' masters of the source code, I beg you--hear my prayer!" As Sinaloa spoke, his feet left the floor. Spinning slowly, he rose into the air, following the soulpipe's beam. "Representative Sinaloa...transmit now!"
Suddenly, Sinaloa exploded upward, streaking along the soulpipe in a strobing blur. There was a distant sonic boom as he vanished into the heavens, flashing out of sight among the flickering garlands of stars.
"Wow." Antarctica walked around the base of the soulpipe, staring up into Sinaloa's rippling wake. "He's in True America now?"
"Somewhere between here and there," said Nevada. "A hub outside the Developers' firewall."
"Don't you mean fire ball?" said Antarctica.
"Fire wall," said Nevada.
Antarctica frowned. "It's just that I see one now. A fire ball."
Nevada squinted upward...and then he saw it, too. A clutch of flames far above, burning in the firmament.
Burning and falling.
Nevada lashed an arm around Antarctica's waist and ran with her, racing away from the soulpipe. Just as they reached the far wall, a thunderous impact crashed down behind them.
Nevada and Antarctica stumbled as the floor buckled. Bracing each other, they managed to stay on their feet...and as the tremor faded, they turned.
The soulpipe was gone. In its place, in the center of the rotunda, was a smoking crater.
"Stay back," said Nevada, and then he ran toward the crater. In spite of his order, he heard Antarctica running close behind him.
When Nevada reached the broken rim of the crater, he saw what had caused the impact. He saw what had fallen from above like a fiery comet.
The body of Sinaloa lay in the crater's heart, curled like a fist and charred from tip to toe.
Antarctica drew up alongside Nevada and gagged. "Oh no."
"I guess they're not taking our calls." Nevada stepped over the edge and eased into the crater. He saw that parts of Sinaloa were still smoldering, glowing cherry red in familiar patterns.
There were messages on Sinaloa's body, burned into his flesh.
"Ninety-seven." Nevada pointed to Sinaloa's left arm, where the numbers had been branded. Then, he pointed at the letters seared into Sinaloa's right arm. "A-C-I-R-E-M-A. 'Acirema.'"
Finally, he read the smoking words on Sinaloa's charred chest. "'ANSWERS IN HOUSE NOW.'"
Leaping into action, Nevada clambered up the crater's slope and over the rim. He started running the instant his feet hit the floor.
*****
Four figures wrapped in star-spangled robes waited outside the big double doors of the House chamber. Their faces were hidden in the depths of shadowy hoods, arms folded across their chests.
Nevada and Antarctica stopped running, staying well back from the hooded figures. Even from a distance, Nevada could see that their blue-and-white robes were stained with splotches of dark red.
Nevada took a step forward. "Stand aside. The sergeant-at-arms has business with the House."
To his surprise, the figures moved to comply. The two in the middle turned and opened the doors to the chamber--but they did not usher him inside. Instead, a fifth figure emerged, clad in red-and-white-striped robes, also hooded.
As the two figures who had opened the doors pulled them shut, the fifth robed figure glided forward. The voice that flowed from under the hood was that of a man...hoarse and muffled, but clearly a man.
"Hello again," he said. "I told you we would meet again after three and four, didn't I?"
Nevada recognized the voice instantly. "Looking Glass."
"Victims three and four are dead, so here I am." Looking Glass bowed his head. "Have you deciphered the clues I gave you?"
"No," said Nevada.
Looking Glass chuckled. "Then prepare to have your mind blown."
Nevada took a step back, pulling Antarctica with him. He briefly considered running, if only for her sake...but he waited. How could he run when he had yet to see inside the House?
"Meet the welcome wagon," said Looking Glass, gesturing at the two robed figures on his right.
Silently, the figure on the far right tugged off its star-spangled hood, revealing a face--a man's face, grinning.
Nevada gasped when he saw who it was. Heart slamming like a piston in his rib cage, he froze, holding on to Antarctica's arm.
Antarctica said the name for them both. "S-Sinaloa?"
The robed man with Sinaloa's face took a bow.
Then, the next figure unmasked. This time, the face under the hood was also familiar.
"Zacatecas." Nevada's head was spinning.
"More where those came from." Looking Glass gestured at the two hooded figures on the other side of him.
The next to unmask was a woman with long, brown hair--Yukon, also back from the dead. Beside her was the man who had started it all, the first to go: Missouri, former Speaker of the House, peeled back his hood and smoothed his neat white hair with a toothy grin.
"What's going on here, Nevada?" Antarctica sounded dazed. "How can they all be alive?"
Nevada felt dazed, too. "The Developers, maybe?"
The four who had come back to life looked at each other with knowing smiles and giggled.
"Not even close," said Looking Glass.
"Some kind of practical joke?" Nevada heard what could have been a muffled scream from behind the double doors of the House chamber. "A stunt to delay a key vote?"
"It is kind of funny," said Looking Glass, "but no. Would you like me to give you a hint?"
Nevada heard a loud thump and a crash from behind the doors. "Why not?"
"Here goes." With that, Looking Glass reached up and pulled off his own red-and-white-striped hood.
And Nevada felt the world of logic and reality dissolve around him.
His mouth fell open. His mind went blank.
Looking Glass, without the hood, had a very familiar face. He wasn't someone returned from the dead, or anyone Nevada had ever expected to see.
Outside of a mirror, that is.
The face staring back at Nevada was his own.
*****
"I bet I know what's going through your mind right now." Looking Glass smiled. "'What a handsome S.O.B.,' am I right?"
Nevada didn't answer.
Stepping forward, Looking Glass extended a hand. "The name
is Adaven. Pleased to meet you, Nevada."
Without thinking, Nevada took Adaven's hand. It was ice-cold to the touch--beyond ice cold.
Adaven gripped Nevada's elbow, freezing him right through the sleeves of his tux and shirt. With a whoop, he swung Nevada around to face the four seemingly resurrected e-reps.
"This is Aolanis." Adaven pointed at the reborn Sinaloa, and then he moved down the line. "This is Sacetacaz, Nokuy, and Iruossim. They're not who you think they are. In fact, you've never met them before."
Nevada frowned. Everything sounded crazy.
"Now come on." Adaven led Nevada toward the doors. "Let's meet the rest of the gang, shall we?"
Grinning, Sacetacaz and Nokuy pushed open the double doors to the House chamber. Adaven guided Nevada inside...right into a nightmare.
The huge room was splashed from top to bottom and side to side with blood and gore. Body parts were scattered everywhere, and corpses were piled like cordwood in the corners.
Even as Nevada recognized the dead faces of e-reps in the corpse heaps, he saw e-reps with the same faces moving around the room. The moving and the motionless looked exactly the same, except some were living and some were dead--and the living weren't behaving the way that Nevada ever would have expected them to.
As Nevada watched, Arkansas, South Korea, and Israel teamed up against Costa Rica, howling as they tore her limb from limb. Across the chamber, Florida and Japan hacked up Chihuahua with knives, cutting out his organs while he screamed in agony.
Antarctica's identical twin slogged past not ten feet from Nevada, dragging a charred and disemboweled corpse by the feet.
Staring at the hellish scene, Nevada could think of only one thing to say, one question to ask: "Why?"
"Why what?" said Adaven. "Why redecorate, you mean? Why have a surprise party?"
"Why are there duplicate e-reps?" said Nevada.
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