“I don’t have time to fight with you about this,” said Connie. “So, I drugged your coffee.”
“You slipped me a mickey?” Tia yawned. “Oh, you did not fucking do that to me.” She tried to wave her finger at Connie, but the limb stayed flat on the table. “I can’t believe you fuckin’ . . .” Her voice trailed off, and Connie caught Tia’s head and lowered it to rest on the table.
“That’s not a very nice thing to do,” said Thelma.
“It’s Kansas,” replied Connie. “I can’t afford to be nice.”
“She’s going to be pissed when she wakes up.”
“I can live with that.” Connie stuffed Thelma in Tia’s pocket. “Tell her I’m sorry if she wakes up before I get back.”
“Wait? I’m not going either? We had a deal. You agreed to take me with you.”
“Kansas,” said Connie by way of explanation. She clicked Thelma quiet before walking out of the shop and across the street.
Stepping into the Melpomene Apple Pie Factory made Connie’s blood run cold. They gave tours every half hour, and she was right on time to catch one starting. She joined a group of tourists, all of whom were way more interested in industrial pie production than could be considered healthy.
The tour guides, Tony and Tina, were a matching set of smiling faces wrapped in cheerfully bright colors. They could’ve been brother and sister. Not in appearance but in mannerisms. They laughed at each other’s jokes and completed each other’s sentences with faux spontaneity. It was like watching a pair of synchronized robots at work. For a moment, Connie thought they might actually be robots, but that was too obvious. They were just two people doing a job they were very familiar with.
The tour ran through a series of exhibits presenting the history of the apple pie, but it was a cursory lesson at best. They were taken to rooms with pictures of pies and offered the most superficial descriptions of pie and what it represented for America, summarized by an illustration of the Statue of Liberty and Lady Justice enjoying a slice together in front of a flag.
It was a whole lot of nothing, and twenty minutes into it, Connie raised her hand.
“I’m terribly sorry,” said Tony. “We don’t take questions.”
“Where do you make the pies?” asked Connie anyway. “I’d like to see that.”
Tina smiled, more as a reflex than anything else. “We aren’t allowed to show you the factory floor itself. Insurance reasons.”
“Why? Did someone get mutilated by a pie-slicing machine? Fall into a batter mixer?”
Tony kept his smile. “Nothing of the sort. We take safety very seriously here.”
“You don’t make pies here, do you?” asked Connie.
The guides glanced at each other, conferring telepathically perhaps.
“A Melpomene apple pie is a multistep process and a closely guarded secret,” said Tony. Or Tina. Either one, really. They were increasingly hard to tell apart.
“It’s apples and pie,” said Connie. “How secret can it be?”
They continued to smile. “Please, no questions,” they said in unison.
Connie mimed zipping her mouth closed.
“Now, if you’ll follow us, we’ll show you the original pie plates where genuine Melpomene apple pies have won various awards for outstanding achievements in the field of baked goods.”
Connie trailed behind the group. Her outburst had the intended effect of making her an annoyance. She had some expertise in the art of shadows. There were master mystics who could render themselves unseen by will alone. She wasn’t nearly that good. She had to get someone really irritated with her first. Once they decided they wanted nothing to do with her, it was relatively easy to tap into that and disappear. She’d never mastered the technique, but for most situations, mastery wasn’t required. When she focused intensely enough, she could virtually disappear for a few seconds. Long enough to slip through a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY that wasn’t locked.
“Hey, you’re not supposed to be back here,” said a woman in a blue business suit.
Connie jammed two fingers into the woman’s chest. The woman gasped and fell unconscious into Connie’s arms. The Sleeping Grace had been developed by Tibetan monks to cure insomnia, but it had other uses. She carried the worker into a nearby closet. There was always a nearby closet.
She studied the woman. This was a problem. In the old days, lairs were staffed by nameless, interchangeable staff, usually stuffed into colored jumpsuits to denote rank and job. If she was lucky, there would be a hard hat or gas mask. Something to hide the face. All you had to do for those lairs was steal the uniform off the right minion, and the rest was gravy.
Times had changed, and most secret societies figured out that stripping their staff of identity might make things more ominous, but it also made infiltration a lot easier. Loyalty was also a problem when henchmen were continually reminded how replaceable they were. Nobody gave a shit about Technician 1234. Not even Technician 1234. Everybody noticed if Jenny from Human Resources went missing.
The other possibility was that Connie had made a terrible mistake and infiltrated an apple pie factory. This wouldn’t be the first time she’d made that kind of mistake. She’d once assumed her own parents had been replaced by imposters, because they’d been acting suspicious. It was their own fault for trying to throw her a surprise birthday party, and they’d forgiven her for the black eyes. She had been only twelve at the time.
Her judgment was better now, but mistakes happened. She’d ruined a great first date by accusing the suave man across the table of being the notorious international assassin the Hyena. She’d been right, but he hadn’t been out to assassinate anyone that night. Just enjoy a nice dinner. She’d tried apologizing, but he’d never returned her calls.
There was the ordinary and extraordinary, and in her life, there was the occasional gray area. Now that area seemed grayer than ever.
She’d come this far and saw no reason to turn back now other than to avoid embarrassment. She left the woman slumbering in the closet and walked down the hallway like she belonged here. In her experience, you could get away with almost anything if you didn’t act like you were doing anything wrong.
She passed several coworkers. She nodded and smiled at them as if everything was perfectly normal. They smiled and nodded back.
The forbidden areas of the Melpomene Apple Pie Factory were decidedly unsinister, but Connie refused to accept that. It would be just like Kansas to screw with her like this. She didn’t make up her mind until she had toured the entire place. She checked every opened door (and a few locked ones) and found nothing more suspicious than the outdated ’70s furniture in the break room. She was about to give up when she caught a snippet of conversation as she passed an office.
“What do you mean, you can’t find her?” a woman asked. “She can’t have just vanished.”
Connie paused beside the open door. The voice was familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it.
“She was on the tour,” said a man. “Then she wasn’t.”
“You’re telling me that she was here, in the heart of our operation, and nobody was keeping an eye on her? How does she simply vanish?”
“Isn’t that how it’s intended to work?” he asked. “She’s an adventurer. She gets into adventures. Maybe she was fooled and left. The tour is designed to be as mind-numbing and uninteresting as possible.”
The woman sighed. “Don’t be an idiot. She didn’t end up here on accident. The tour wouldn’t fool her. It’d only make her more suspicious. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d figured everything out by now.”
“It’s only been ten minutes, ma’am.”
“In ten minutes, Constance Verity destroyed the Shadow Ottoman Empire.”
“We’ll find her.”
“You don’t get it. It’s too late. She’s probably found her way to the self-destruct mechanism and is activating it right now.”
They paused as if waiting for an alarm to go off.
“About that, why do we even have a self-destruct mechanism?” asked the man.
“Not my department. We need to find her and limit the damage she can do. The longer she’s running around unnoticed, the worst it will be. I don’t have to tell you how important this operation is.”
“No, ma’am.”
“Why the hell am I telling you this?” wondered the woman aloud. “Damn it. She could be overhearing everything we’re saying.”
The woman came out of her office, glanced around. Connie ducked behind the water cooler. She recognized the woman’s face now. Despite the twenty years since Connie had last seen her, Mrs. Alvarado, Connie’s old high-school chemistry teacher, looked exactly the same. Not a new wrinkle on her face.
Alvarado spoke to the empty hallway. “If you’re out there, Constance, I would advise you to show yourself now. For the good of everyone.”
Connie almost stepped out, compelled by a reflex to obey her favorite teacher.
Mrs. Alvarado retreated to her office and shut the door.
Connie had pushed her luck enough. Better to leave the factory behind and come back later, when they weren’t on alert. She had no trouble getting back into the tour area and slipped unnoticed among a group of tourists near the end of their cursory journey through apple pie history at the gift shop.
“Now, then, are there any questions?” asked Tony.
Nobody raised their hands.
“No questions at all?” asked Tina.
The group murmured among themselves, but everyone seemed satisfied.
The exit was just across the shop. Connie slinked behind a rack of apple-themed T-shirts and coffee mugs toward it. She was almost there when Tony stepped in front of her.
“I believe you had some questions earlier, Miss Verity.”
“No, I’m good,” she said.
She kicked him in the nuts, and he fell over.
The female guide dove at Connie. Connie danced aside, elbowed her in the throat, and smashed a pie-shaped cookie jar over her head.
“I didn’t think questions were allowed.” Connie stepped over the groaning guide.
The old lady behind the counter glared but wisely did not make a move to stop Connie.
One of the tourists, a fat man in a plaid shirt and shorts, socks, and sandals, grabbed her by the arm. She punched him in the face. He wobbled but didn’t let go.
A woman in sensible mom jeans and a turquoise cat blouse got Connie in a headlock. As she struggled to free herself, the rest of the tourists closed in around her.
Damn it.
She really hated Kansas.
19
It was almost endearing how pleased Thornton was with himself.
“We got her,” he said with a satisfied grin.
“You’re an idiot,” said Bonita Alvarado.
His smile fell.
“Your orders were to find and capture her if necessary,” she said. “Notice I said if necessary. If you’d caught her at the self-destruct controls or on the verge of gathering information we’d rather she not have, I’d say job well done. But you caught her escaping.”
“Yes, ma’am.” His blank expression told her he still didn’t get it.
“She was leaving, nearly out the door. All you had to do in that case was let her go.”
“But I don’t understand, ma’am.”
Bonita glared at him. A few years before, she would’ve executed him for his incompetence. He was standing over where the trapdoor to the shark tank used to be. The door had been covered over, and the tank was now a flowered atrium where the employees ate their lunch.
Executions weren’t the best way to discipline employees. It was difficult to learn from one’s mistakes after being eaten alive. It didn’t do morale much good, either. Still, there was something terribly dissatisfying about a verbal warning and a write-up in a minion’s file. She understood it wasn’t smart to go overboard on the executions, but once in a while, she was convinced it was a good idea.
Bonita explained slowly, almost as if to a child. But not really, because she liked children, who were brighter than given credit for and had a decent excuse when they weren’t. It was only Thornton’s round, cherubic face, giving him the appearance of youth, that prevented her from shooting him on the spot, policy reforms be damned.
“I wanted her captured to keep her from doing any damage while she was here,” she said, “but she was leaving. She was practically gone. She wasn’t going to do any damage once she was out the front door.”
“But wouldn’t she just come back later?”
“She most certainly would have, but by then, we’d have set things up properly. We’d have left behind a few pieces of evidence for her to find that would lead her where we wanted her to go.”
They would’ve also relocated all essential personnel for the better-than-average chance that Constance would activate the self-destruct on her way out. Thornton wouldn’t have made the cut.
“Can’t you still do that?” he asked.
She opened her desk drawer, removed the gun, and shot him in the foot. It made her feel better but didn’t have the same oomph as hearing an idiot being sliced into pieces by a grid of high-powered lasers.
He crouched on the floor, whimpering, bleeding on her carpet.
“Thornton, the problem you don’t seem to be grasping is that because of your overzealousness, Constance Verity is still here, and as long as she’s here, everything has a very good chance of going to hell.”
“Can’t we just let her go?”
Bonita walked around the desk, sat on it, put the gun beside her. “Is this your first day?”
“No, ma’am.” He stared at the pistol.
“Constance isn’t a moron. Don’t you think that would make her suspicious?”
He bit his lip. Sweat dripped down his face.
“Well, don’t you?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Very good, Thornton. A suspicious Constance Verity is exactly what we don’t want. We have dedicated decades to making certain that doesn’t happen. No easy task, all things considered. And you, in one moment of idiocy, have jeopardized everything. Now I have to figure out a way to unbotch what you so determinedly botched.”
“Sorry.”
“Oh, it’s fine. We all make mistakes, and you’ve been an adequate head of security up to this point. I suppose I might have overreacted, myself. My job is harder, but if it was easy, anyone could do it. Even you.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Get that foot looked at. I’ll think of something. I always do.”
He limped out of her office. She went to the interrogation room. She got lost along the way.
They’d never used the room. They’d never had anyone in the cells, either. The pie factory was the heart of the operation, but nothing troubling was supposed to happen here. Now Constance Verity, handcuffed to a table, sat in a small, white room behind a one-way mirror, and Bonita had no idea what to do with her.
Bonita studied Constance through the glass.
“All she’s been doing is sitting there,” said Peterson, the guard assigned to watch her. In the old days, he would’ve been just another faceless underling. Now policy asked she take time to get to know the people who worked for her.
He asked, “Shouldn’t she be doing something? Like trying to escape?”
“She’s just waiting for her chance,” said Bonita. “She can be patient.”
“Doesn’t look like much, does she, ma’am?”
“Looks can be deceiving.”
Bonita entered the room.
Connie smiled at her. “Hello, Mrs. Alvarado. It’s been a while.”
“Please, Connie. Call me Bonita. No need to be formal. This isn’t school. I’m not your teacher. And you’re a grown woman. And what an accomplished woman, I might add.”
“You look the same,” said Connie. “What’s your secret? Fountain of youth? Anti-aging serum? Vampire?”
“I take care of my
self.” She sat across from Connie. “I suppose you must have a great many questions.”
“Is this the part where you reveal your sinister scheme?”
“Perhaps. If you answer some of my questions, I’ll endeavor to answer some of yours. And, as a show of good faith, I’ll even answer one of yours first.”
“And I’m supposed to trust you?”
“I doubt that very much, but I can only promise you I won’t lie. At the worst, I’ll omit, which is sort of like lying.”
Connie said, “Okay. Why do you want me to go to the Muroid homeworld? Is there something waiting for me there? Or is it only to distract me while you carry out your plans?”
Bonita considered her reply.
“We don’t want you in outer space. We like you here. Not here, specifically. But on Earth.”
“Then why go to all the trouble of setting it up?”
Bonita held up her finger. “Ah, ah. It’s my turn. How did you find us?”
“I found notes at Area 51. Pretty sloppy, if you ask me.”
“Of course you did.” Bonita laughed. “I knew our association with those idiots would bite us on the ass eventually.”
Connie said, “You’re not with them?”
“We were. No longer. A schism in our agendas. Happens all the time. I’d forgotten all about them, but apparently their sloppiness is still inconveniencing us. But that’s the way it is. You can’t plan for every contingency. We must adapt, and it can hardly be surprising that you’re here. We did our best to hide it from you, both personally and that adventure-seeking spell of yours. There isn’t anything especially nefarious going on here. It’s all very boring, intentionally so. The idea was that while this might be where things are run, it’s not the place one finds any sort of adventure. The hope was that its very dullness would keep you from discovering it. So much for that plan.”
“What does this have to do with me?” asked Connie.
“That’s two questions in a row for you,” replied Bonita, “but I’ll answer it. This has everything to do with you, Constance. This entire operation is about you and your life. Thousands of people have been employed to shape you into the woman you are today, using every tool available. The utmost care has been taken to ensure that you become who and what you need to be.”
The Last Adventure of Constance Verity Page 12
