by M. R. Forbes
“Almost six years.”
He made an impressed whistling sound. “I heard the record was two. Before you, I mean.”
I remembered my time in New Orleans when the dice had first called to me. “Maybe, but I’m cheating.”
He laughed again. “Cheating death? Come on, Baron. There’s more to you than you’re letting on.” He paused for a second, and his voice dropped, losing its accent and changing into something much more menacing. “Or is it more than even you realize?”
I stepped away from the bar, turning on him. “What?”
He was wiping down the surface of the bar. He looked at me. “What?” he said as if we hadn’t just been talking.
“What do you mean, more than I realize?”
“Are you okay, Baron? I didn’t say anything.”
Damn. I hated when shit like this happened. It was almost as bad as being randomly shot at.
I started to turn around, to scan the crowd for Azeban again. A hand squeezed my left shoulder as I turned me head to the right.
“There you are,” I said, looking back and expecting to see Prithi’s avatar.
It wasn’t Prithi.
It was Tarakona’s spy, the one who called herself Sandman.
“Baron,” she said, smiling. “I’m sorry to trick you into coming here like this. I need your help.”
Trick me?
She held out her hand. I noticed that the green flesh on the palm was a lighter color and smoother than the darker green, scaly skin on the other side.
“Can we talk in private?”
The last time I had seen her, we had been in a Machine construct of her own design. She had kissed me before Death had come along and chased her away. I looked into her yellow eyes. They weren’t real. Nothing but ones and zeroes. Even so, I could feel the concern in them. She was scared.
This one I had a feeling I was going to regret.
“Okay,” I said, taking her hand.
Before I knew it we were somewhere else.
11
Klimpt
“Did you make this?” I asked.
We were well away from the more traveled areas of the Machine, off in some distant corner where the Sandman’s construct was surrounded by unused bits or bytes or pixels or whatever. We were standing in a field, surrounded by thousands of white rabbits munching on millions of flowers. To the north was a huge merry-go-round. To the south was a waterfall.
“Yes. I’m sorry it’s so undefined, but I didn’t have a lot of time.” She was still holding my hand, and she tugged me toward the merry-go-round. “We can talk while we ride.”
I tugged back gently. “Why don’t we talk now?”
She shook her head. “While we ride. Trust me.”
She had used her technical skills to call me and make me think I was talking to Prithi. She was spying on Mr. Black for Tarakona while she was living somewhere under the wizard’s massive umbrella. If she said it had to wait, it had to wait.
I let her lead me across the field. The rabbits scampered out of our way as we passed, and then filled in the space behind us. I hadn’t gotten a good look at Sandman’s avatar the first time we had met. Now I could see that not only was her skin green, but her hair was as well, knotted together into long dreadlocks that hung down her back, then ends sitting halfway across her rear. There was no shortage of avatars with perfectly chiseled bodies and colored skin in the machine, but it was a look that seemed to fit her in a more nuanced way. It was impressive work.
“Is Tarakona in trouble?” I asked.
She turned her head back to smile at me. “When we get to the ride.”
I didn’t waste my breath on any other questions until we reached the merry-go-round. She hopped up onto the platform and offered me her hand. I waved it away and climbed up on my own, enjoying the strength I felt in my limbs.
“Which animal do you want?” she asked.
“What?”
She waved at the seats on the ride. A horse, an elephant, a hedgehog, and of course, a rabbit. She seemed to have an affinity for the things.
“I’ll take the elephant,” I said, choosing it because it was directly adjacent to the rabbit.
“Good choice,” she replied.
We mounted our respective mammals. Circus music started to play, and the merry-go-round began to move. I waited in silence for her to speak. I figured she would when she thought it was safe.
“To answer your question,” she said. “We’re all in trouble.”
“How did I know you were going to say that?”
My stomach dropped a little as the elephant rose up and dropped, faster than it would on any normal merry-go-round. Sandman smiled as the same thing happened to her.
“I need you to find me,” she said. “I need you to rescue me.”
“What do you mean?”
“It isn’t a riddle, Conor,” she replied. “Mr. Black took me from my family less than an hour after I was born. I’ve been trapped under his control since.”
I wasn’t expecting that. “What? Why did he take you? How did he know to take you?”
“I’m different than the others. Unique, like you. He owned the hospital where my parents went to have me. He must have gotten word from the doctors.”
That made sense. All of the Houses owned hospitals, and they used them to try to track down powerful new users and get their hooks into them first. “You’re unique? How?”
She smiled. “I’m a new human, like an elf or a dwarf, but different.”
“Are you being intentionally vague?”
“No.”
“What?”
“I don’t know what I am. I only know that I’m different, and Black won’t let me out. That’s why I need your help.”
“Why don’t you ask Tarakona to help you?”
“I don’t want him to know. I’ve been a pawn in this game literally since the minute I was born, Conor. I don’t want to be under the thumb of the Houses anymore.”
“Tarakona doesn’t have thumbs.” I said it to see how much she knew about him.
“I know his secret,” she replied.
“So, you want to be free of Mr. Black, and you want to go behind your other patriarch’s back to do it. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you need rescuing now? Why not six months ago? Or twenty years ago?”
“I’m only twenty years old, so that last one would have been hard. Why now? Because you kept Black from getting his hands on the Hua.”
“You helped me with that.”
“I know. It had to be done. Mr. Black has backup plans on top of his backup plans. He has a use for me that will bring him closer to what he wants.”
I knew what he wanted. I also knew I didn’t want him to get it.
“This plan doesn’t involve you dying, does it?” I asked.
Her eyes told me it did. Of course it did.
“You stole some of the Xenoxofril from Black’s lab last night, didn’t you?”
“Yes. I needed it.”
“I know. What if I told you that my blood could be put into a centrifuge, and molecules extracted that when added to the chain of Xenoxofril could restore any living organism to perfect health?”
My mouth fell open. I couldn’t find any words to answer her. My digital heart began thumping, and I felt a chill sweep across me. “I. Uh.” I swallowed hard. “Perfect health?”
I didn’t even notice the rise and fall of my elephant after that. She waited in silence while I overcame the initial shock. Nothing was that simple.
“What about leathers?” I asked.
“Turned back into normal homo sapien.”
“Wizards? Users?”
“The same.”
“You’re saying magic is a disease?”
“Biologically, yes. You could make that argument.”
“Do you believe it?”
“I don’t know. Considering I would have to die to make it happen, I’m a little biased.”
<
br /> “Right.”
I stared at her for a minute. Then I stared straight ahead. I could hear the merry-go-round music oom-pa-paing in my skull, and it was making it hard to think. If I had thought I was in an impossible position before, it had just been dialed up to eleven.
Was the new, old version of humanity truly a disease? Were we supposed to all be plain, ordinary homo sapien? That seemed hard to believe considering that history suggested the monsters had come first. What else would explain Sandman’s claim that there was something in her genes that could not only change a leather back into a person, but make them healthy as well?
“You’re saying that if I took this new pill, my cancer would be gone?” I asked.
“Completely. That doesn’t mean it wouldn’t come back, but you would have to be doubly unlucky.”
“You aren’t giving me a lot of incentive to help you.”
“You were a doctor, Conor. You’re supposed to save lives. I need you to save mine.”
“I’ve done some pretty horrible things to stay alive. Letting Black get what he wants wouldn’t be the worst of them.”
“Yes, it would. The world is supposed to be this way. Nature created it twice now. It’s humanity that keeps screwing with it to suit our own needs and goals. Do you really think that’s right? Do you think I deserve to die because of it?”
The merry-go-round stopped suddenly, the lights around it dimming. We stared at one another.
I didn’t think that we should mess with it or I wouldn’t have stopped Black in the first place. She knew that and was counting on me to make the same decision again.
“You told me that not saving you could save me, but you won’t tell me what you are?” I asked.
“I told you, I don’t know.”
I didn’t believe her. How could someone know they were different, but not know how? “Have it your way. Let me ask again. What’s in it for me?”
At least Tarakona had given me the ring and wads of cash.
“If you don’t do it, I’ll tell Mr. Black about your wife and daughter. You can be healthy, Conor. They’ll be dead.”
I felt my breath escape me in response to the sucker punch.
“You wouldn’t,” I whispered.
“What choice do I have? I don’t want to threaten you. I need you, Conor. There is no other wizard alive who would be willing to try to get me out. There’s no other user that can. Your talents are unique in all of the world.”
I clenched my teeth. I wasn’t going to risk Karen and Molly. She knew that about me, too. She was playing me perfectly, and I hated it.
“Where are you?”
“Mr. Black’s home.”
“The one at the bottom of the ocean?”
“Yes.”
“The one with the surface entrance that changes position regularly?”
“Yes.”
“The one that no one is supposed to ever be able to find?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me which door is the right one?”
“I’m working on it.”
“That’s not a reassuring answer.”
“It isn’t a simple question. I’ll provide you a list of known locations where the door might be while I continue to work to single it out. I have narrowed it down somewhat at least.”
“How many?”
“Twenty-two.”
“That’s a lot.”
“I know.”
“How long do we have?”
“A month at most.”
“I’m not feeling confident about this.”
“How do you think I feel? It’s my life at stake.”
The merry-go-round vanished. We were standing in front of one another. She was looking at me with frightened eyes.
“I know you might not be able to reach me in time,” she said. “Please try.”
I started to answer. Before I could, she had stepped forward and put her lips to mine again. Her kiss was a little softer this time, more desperate.
She pulled away. “Please try.”
Then she vanished, leaving me standing in the field alone.
I licked my lips, tasting the remnants of her on them. Her kiss was sweet.
Nothing else about this deal was.
“Exit Machine.”
12
Carrots
I lifted the helmet from my head and dropped it on the chair beside me. I sat there for a minute, getting used to the feel of my dying body once again. The weakness. The frailty. It seemed a little better than usual, and now I understood why. If Black’s team had improved the meds to do a better job of healing, then I wasn’t as dead as usual. At the same time, I could still hear the death magic whenever I listened for it, as strong as it had been the night before. Was the new concoction countering the standard effects?
It was a win-win situation for me. At least right now.
Except for the matter of the Sandman needing to be bailed out of her so-called prison.
There was a part of me that was nervous about the whole thing. I wasn’t sure I should believe her story, not when I knew Black was having trouble locating me. It was more than possible he had sent her to set me up, to deliver me to one location or another for his team to make an easy grab and end my existence forever.
At the same time, she had put a lot of faith in me by telling me what the options were. She had appealed to my less jaded nature. Then again, she had also threatened the only thing in the world I cared for.
Then again, she had seemed sincere in saying she didn’t want to.
The only thing I knew was that there was no way I was going to know it was a trap until it was a trap. If I made the decision to do this, I had to go all-in and take whatever came from that. It was a scary thought. I wasn’t too eager to find myself dead.
A blue LED was flashing on the side of the hardware that powered the rig. New data had been passed over to me. The list of locations. I slid out of the chair and turned the monitor so I could see it. There were twenty-two addresses in a neat spreadsheet, their locations spread pretty much randomly around the world. Two of them were starred, which I assumed meant they were higher probability than the others.
I stared at the list for a minute, in part to decide what to do, and in part to commit it to memory. Who was I kidding? I already knew what I was going to do. Pretending I didn’t was just my S.O.P.
I grabbed my phone from my trench and took a picture of the screen. Then I deleted the file from the rig and shut everything down. Death terrified me. Mr. Black reversing nature scared me too. There was no good answer here, no way out that let me be blissfully ignorant. That had all ended the day I hijacked the job to steal the Hua from the two bruisers. I was stuck. Trapped. Better to take control and stay on the offensive than to duck my head and hope it would all go away.
Because I knew it wouldn’t.
I climbed down from the loft, trying to clear my head and think. There was a certain level of difficulty involved with doing anything against Mr. Black. At the same time, I had already managed to stop his bullshit once before. Tarakona, on the other hand? I had promised him I would be his soldier in this battle, and now I was about to go awol before he’d ever called on me to do anything major for him. It seemed a lousy way to start a relationship, and I had to hope that my bond to his son would be enough to smooth things over when this was over.
Assuming I wasn’t over.
I lifted my cell and dialed Prithi. If I was going to be making a run against Black, I needed my Operator to help me scout the locations and plan an offensive.
Her phone rang eight times and went to voicemail. Damn it.
“Prithi, it’s Conor. This is important. Call me back.”
I disconnected and went over to the bank of windows, pushing aside the heavy drapes and letting the sunshine hit my face. I looked down to the street below, scanning for Frank. He was going to love it when I explained our next job to him. Stop Mr. Black from being able to make him human again. Would he go fo
r that?
He had already turned down my suggestion that Black could fix him in exchange for my life. I imagined he would stay the course now, too. It was surprising, but now that he was out from under Mr. Black, now that he was no longer shackled he seemed to enjoy being a leather. I couldn’t argue with the size and strength. I had felt it before through the mask, and I couldn’t say it was a deal I would reject if given an option between that and this.
I didn’t see him down on the street. It was okay. I could wait. I sat on my sofa and put my feet up on my coffee table, leaning my head back and closing my eyes, running over inventory in my head. I had a freezer with a couple of corpses in the corner, and another in the basement of the building.
To be honest, what I had was sub-par. I had been so busy testing out the spells in the book Tarakona had given me that my efforts to collect good bodies had been lackluster. My best piece was a gangbanger named Turk, a bald, tattooed guy with an attitude. He enjoyed mayhem and chaos, which made him relatively easy to control when the mission called for it. He was good as a distraction, and even in death, he was nimble enough to pick a lock and shoot a gun. He had some issues with keeping his mouth shut, though.
I scanned the photo I had taken, reviewing the locations. None of them were nearby, and most were in other parts of the world. It didn’t matter how good my stiffs were if I couldn’t transport them they were useless. Tarakona had airlifted them before, but I couldn’t tell Tarakona about this.
I was going to have to go it alone.
The front door opened at the same time, and Frank came lumbering in with his arms wrapped around two massive bags of groceries.
“I thought if we’re going to work together, we need to keep our energy up,” he said.
The head of a bunch of carrots was sticking up out of one of the bags.
“I haven’t eaten carrots since I was twelve,” I said.
“No wonder you got cancer, pal,” he replied.
Well, not completely alone. At least I had my trogre. “Leave the bags on the counter. We’ve got work to do.”
