by Sean Platt
Nicolai had wanted out of his job as a speechwriter so he could finally create, could finally take risks and build his own future, could finally get out from under Isaac’s passive-aggressive thumb and Natasha’s unrelenting seduction. But he’d made his decision without having all of the information. What might have happened to him during the missing weekend? What might have happened to Isaac? Maybe Isaac had really, truly (for real this time!) needed Nicolai. Maybe whatever had happened (and what might happen next) was the pearl-in-the-oyster he had been waiting for. Nicolai was paid to turn lemons into lemonade — or had been until a few hours ago. Weren’t conspiracy and scandal excellent lemons? Maybe he’d screwed up.
Nicolai spent the next few minutes pacing the monument, pondering the soldier. Maybe it represented the proud military who’d fallen in battle, if not specifically in the shelling. But then why position it as a monument to the shelling rather than to the conflict as a whole? The bronze plaque clearly said it honored those lost during the shelling of District Zero. Nicolai looked up at the soldier, mystified.
A noise behind him turned his attention to Kai as she pulled up behind him on a screetbike, inexplicably wearing a baseball cap and a large wrap around her neck and shoulders. Alone.
“That’s an interesting look for you,” he said.
“Get on.”
“Where’s Doc?”
“In an alley,” she said, brushing a runaway strand of long brown hair behind her ear. “In a dumpster with another man.”
“Is that a gay joke?”
Kai didn’t seem to be in the mood for joking, and Nicolai, always observant, saw things in her manner that he didn’t like as he climbed onto the bike behind her. She looked around nervously, as if afraid of being followed. Her clothes — blue jeans and a plain white shirt — were clean and unassuming (if far less sexy than her usual wares), but there were spots of dirt and what might be caked blood on the back of her neck, as if she’d changed quickly but not had time to properly shower. She seemed to have spritzed herself with perfume, but under the flowery scent was an earthy smell tinged with sweat and adrenaline.
“What happened, Kai?” he asked.
“It’s complicated.”
“I was there, wasn’t I? Whatever you’re running from, I was there.”
She looked back at Nicolai, and for a moment, he was afraid she might strike a woman pushing a baby carriage down the sidewalk. She turned forward, jogged the bike around the woman, and said, “Yes.”
“I’ve been wiped?”
“Sounds that way. What’s the last thing you remember?”
Nicolai told her about going to get the wetchip from Doc on Friday, then knowing nothing after that.
“So you don’t remember the simulator. Fighting with Doc. Me being tortured, then taken away for evaporation?”
“Jesus. No. Why?”
Natasha and Isaac’s apartment, where Kai said she’d left Doc and another man named Whitlock, was across town from the park. So during the long ride through traffic, Kai told Nicolai a story that chilled his bones.
When she was done, she told him about the rock and the hard place she found herself between. Then, she told him exactly how she planned to kill Doc Stahl inside the Ryans’ lush uptown penthouse.
Chapter 4
In 2041, Natasha won a Best Artist award from the Music Artists’ Alliance. It was a particularly brilliant honor, and the one award among her many that Natasha particularly cherished. The MAA was the recording industry’s first truly meritocratic organization. As early as the turn of the 21st century, musicians were breaking out without needing help from the big businesses who had grown comfortable raping them, but at the time, truly independent artists were the exception rather than the rule and it was hard to buck the system and distribute music on your own. Things had progressed nicely by the 20s, and around the time the world was celebrating its AIDS and cancer cures and the unparalleled scientific discoveries being made on the new lunar base, it looked as if musicians might finally get their fair shake on a more global level. But then the weather went bad and the chaos started, and people stopped caring about music for a decade. In 2038, however, the MAA was formed, structured as a virtual co-op that granted artists a 60% cut of music they produced on their own. Musicians rejoiced. And in 2041, Natasha won the MAA’s most coveted award. The award statue was simple but beautiful. Its base was brown marble formed into the shape of a shallow bowl. A solid ball of brushed metal rested in the bowl’s basin. Natasha didn’t know what kind of metal it was, but it was heavy, about the size of a shot put and maybe half of a shot put’s weight. She loved to pick the ball up out of the bowl, feel its heft in her hands, and read her name. The legend read “Best Artist of 2041” — and below that, “Natasha Ryan.”
When Isaac said the thing about her being fat, the award was sitting on a shelf near Natasha’s right hand, so she threw the metal ball at him hard enough to punch a hole in the wall. The hole was perfectly round and looked as if it had been removed with a large cookie cutter. Isaac, who had parried to the side to avoid a direct hit to his face, looked at Natasha with something like disbelief. He looked more afraid than angry. He would be more afraid than angry, she thought with spite. He was so goddamn weak.
“You could have killed me,” he said.
“Fuck you, Isaac!” she yelled.
Natasha was so furious that she was starting to cry. She wasn’t sure anymore how the argument had started, but it probably had something to do with Isaac, his fucking work, and his fucking inability to cope with his position. ‘Directorate Czar of Internal Satisfaction.’ What a joke! He didn’t have any satisfaction himself, so how was he supposed to help the members of his party be satisfied? And really, what reason did they even have to be satisfied? The Directorate was shit, in Natasha’s opinion. She hated it, hated its ethic, hated that she’d allowed Isaac to talk her into shifting to Directorate and being saddled with the baggage that came with it. Any decent self-made person was Enterprise, and any Enterprise person worth anything would see Natasha’s Directorate Shift all those years ago for what it was: a political move and a cop-out. She was married to a man who was thought of as “Mr. Directorate” by the press (but only because he was Micah’s brother; ‘Internal Satisfaction’ wasn’t important without the Ryans’ drama) and had needed to become Directorate to make his party look less shitty. But it was shitty. Natasha was in a party of layabouts, most of whom sat inside all day long plugged into The Beam, receiving a government dole for contributing nothing. Enterprise had always been more Natasha’s style. The Directorate said that Enterprise was ruthless — that members would slit each other’s throats in order to reach the top — but Natasha didn’t see it that way. Or, perhaps, she didn’t care. What did it matter how many throats were being slit at the bottom if you were good enough to reach the top?
“Okay, I didn’t mean that,” said Isaac, backpedaling. “You weren’t fat back then. It just came out. I just meant that there was more to your appeal than…”
Natasha threw the award’s marble base. It hit Isaac in the side, causing him to buckle forward.
“Noah Fucking West, Natasha!”
“Your stupid fucking party! You and your stupid fucking job! Who gives a shit? It’s all about appearances! All smoke and mirrors! Being raw and real and taking risks is what got me where I am. Go ahead and say it again, Isaac! Say that ‘real’ meant fat too! Fuck you!”
But he wouldn’t say it again, because Isaac was a coward. A coward who represented a party of cowards. She hated the Directorate. Being Directorate these past years had made her weak, like Isaac. She hadn’t truly struggled in decades, not since she’d started receiving a fixed Directorate salary based on her track record as a top-billing performer. It would have been different if she’d stayed Enterprise. Even after reaching a high level of fame and fortune, Enterprise still offered an artist a reason to grow and develop. She could always create another best-selling album. She could win more awards, increas
e her creative cache. She could connect with more people and change more lives. But what incentive had there been since she’d been Directorate? Every concert became an obligation. There was no reason to perform the concerts, or to perform them especially well. There was no reason to sing her heart out and to give her all. Her accolades and remuneration were always the same no matter how much effort she exerted. For Natasha, it had never really been about the money, but at least credits were something she could count. Credits told her how she was doing. Credits were her cookie at the end of a meal — not that Natasha ate cookies. She had dieted nonstop for years before getting her first nanos, and she’d built up enough engrained food guilt in that time to last a lifetime. She could eat a buffalo today and not gain an ounce, but she was programmed to eat right. Just like Directorate had programmed her to lay around like a diva, half-ass her performances, and believe she had nothing to strive for.
“Jesus, Natasha. Calm down.” Isaac held up his hands. Surrendering, like a coward.
“I hate this life, Isaac! I fucking hate it!”
“Oh, but you’re happy to use the things we have. To have a driver and a fancy hover. To spend millions and millions on shit…”
Natasha walked toward him, slinking like a serpent, animating her face with drama. “Oh, but I do those things just to fill the emptiness in paradise, love. When there’s no real reason to get up in the morning and work for something, there’s a giant hole that begs to be filled. And a girl’s got to have her holes filled, baby.” She put her finger to her lips and made an Oops! face.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“When life stops getting you off… well, you’ve got to get off on something.” Her eyes flicked toward her office.
Isaac’s eyes followed hers, looking toward her office. The door was ajar, her immersion rig fully visible.
“What… I mean…”
“Having a hard time forming a sentence without your speechwriter?”
For a moment, Natasha thought he might hit her. But that was one of the inequities of marital fighting: she was allowed to flail and throw things at him and he wasn’t allowed to do the same. His eyes became like hot glass. Then he pushed by her, stalking toward the center of the apartment. That was a low blow, and it had landed squarely in his chest. Like all low blows, it hurt because it was true. Isaac would be lost without Nicolai, and the panic was eating him alive.
Of course, she could still make it worse, so she did.
“Look on the bright side,” she said, walking closer, talking at his back. “Maybe he didn’t quit because you’re an asshole. Maybe it was your shitty party that drove him away. You can’t blame Nicolai. I’ll bet he was just tired of being a whore. Smart, creative, attractive man like that? Emphasis on man. You remember what he was like, before you ruined him? He never did give us all of the details of what he did in the Wild East, but he showed up at the border with a crossbow. I’ll bet he really knew how to use it. The things he must have pierced with those hard shafts. Oh, that really turned me on. I remember a few times, when you were away…”
Isaac turned, his eyes flashing, and slapped Natasha hard enough to rock her head on her shoulders.
“Maybe you are a man after all,” she said, shocked, a hand to her warming cheek. “Man enough to hit a woman.”
“You’re barely a woman.” He looked Natasha up and down, from her nano-slimmed waist to her nano-sculpted cheekbones to her nano-firmed breasts. “Hell, you’re barely human.”
“Fuck you.”
“You’re so original. So creative. You think Directorate is so terrible? Then leave it. Put your money where your mouth is.” He watched her, gauging her response to the change in his usually timid demeanor. He was going to call her bluff. She’d always been the blusterer; being a temperamental, bitchy prima donna was what she’d built her career around. When she’d been young, Natasha had written songs about the wrath of a scorned woman. When she got older, her songs became about the wrath of a stalked celebrity. Everything she’d ever done had been centered around hot air.
“I don’t need to prove anything to you,” she said.
Isaac turned his back and began to move, leaving her behind.
Natasha found herself incensed. Suddenly he was the one walking away. This time, she followed him. She wanted to throw something at his back, but she’d already rolled over to expose her soft belly and now he was going to win the fight. That was unacceptable given that she was, without question, right about all of this. She looked at her office, jonesing hard for Andre’s embrace. Andre could make all of this pain and anger go away, and Natasha taking some vengeance cock would show Isaac who had the power. But rushing to her virtual lover would change nothing. An hour from now, Isaac would return to being a weak toady for his millions of layabouts and she’d go back to being the diva on the divan, living a pointless life filled with everything she’d never want.
But he couldn’t resist getting in another barb, so once he was a few feet across the apartment, Isaac turned to face her again.
“You’re all smoke and no fire, aren’t you?” he said. “You used to have fire. Back when you were that little pudgy girl bringing the world to its knees, you had fire.”
“I had fire because I had to! What’s the point of having fire in the Directorate?”
“So leave,” he taunted, now walking toward her again. “Do it. Shift at Shift, and go to Enterprise. Lose that gigantic salary of yours so that you’ll be free to sink or swim. I don’t have to share my dole with you, you know. That’ll give you your fire back. But will anyone listen to you when Directorate isn’t paying your way? Or do they already know that you’ve sold out? How many free seats are at your concerts these days? How many contest winners? How much could you really make if your future was in your hands again? Do you think you have any credibility left? Natasha Ryan, who used to be so raw and real until she decided to enhance the shit out of herself and get comfy, Natasha who started raking in credits for doing nothing but sitting around on her not-fat-at-all-anymore ass.” He crossed the last few paces between them, backing her up to the steps up from the sunken living room. A snake’s grin crawled across his face. “You don’t have the guts. And no matter how much you scream and yell and posture, you know the truth: you did sell out.”
From deep, deep down, a young girl with heavy thighs and a thick middle spoke up inside Natasha. Knowing she’d almost certainly regret it, she said, “Fine. I’ll do it.”
Isaac’s grin vanished. “What?”
“I’ll shift. I’ll go Enterprise. I don’t need your money. I’ll still have your house. I’ll eat your food. Thanks for supporting me while I make my comeback… hubby.”
“Wait.”
“You can’t divorce me. It’d look terrible, and I’d get half of what you own. So you’re stuck with me. How long is left until Shift? Three weeks?” She put a thoughtful finger to her chin. “Just enough time to tell the sheets all about it. I’ll bet I could even sell the story. It’d be okay; I’d just insist that they pay me after Shift, after I’m officially Enterprise. It sure sounds juicy: ‘Natasha Ryan, famed songstress and long-suffering wife of prominent Directorate asshole Isaac Ryan, rejuvenates her career with a bold move reminiscent of her early years — turning back to her true people by shifting from her husband’s shit-ass party.’ ”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I would. ‘ “It was my husband’s idea,” says the fabulous singer.’ Will that make you look good or bad, Isaac? I figure it’s a toss-up. You’ll look like a loser and a two-faced hypocrite to your party, but you’ll be popular with soccer moms. Well, unless they’re Directorate.”
“Natasha, wait. Let’s talk about this.”
Natasha felt the power slide right back to her side of the fence. She turned and walked away from him and this time, he followed. As it should be.
“Natasha!”
“This is such an excellent idea, Isaac!” she shouted over her shoulder as she made her way
toward the bedroom. “It solves everything. I never wanted to shift anyway. Now I’ll be free. I’ll get my credibility back. You can’t call me a hypocrite anymore, but I can still call you one. And hey, if I fail, I’ve still got alimony to fall back on.”
“There’s no goddamn alimony in Enterprise!” he shouted, now practically running after her.
“There is in Directorate,” she said. “I’ll bet I could get the courts to see it my way.”
“Look. Let’s talk about this.”
“Nothing to talk about.”
“Natasha! Noah Fucking West! You… you can’t do this!”
“You told me to do this.”
Isaac grabbed Natasha by the shoulders and spun her around. His face seemed desperate, which was the way she thought it looked best. She smirked, knowing the expression would made her both wrathful and beautiful.
“Look. I’m sorry. Don’t do this Natasha. I take it all back. Okay? I was upset. This thing with Nicolai. You’re right; I need him. I don’t know what to do. I need you. I need your support. I can’t take this big of a hit. It’ll be a serious blow to the party. I’ll lose my position. Natasha? Help me. You have to help me.”
She looked at him, seeing the pleading in his eyes, hearing the appeal in his voice. He looked like a turtle, rolled onto its back. Natasha couldn’t help but feel sorry for him, like she would for the turtle.
“Isaac,” she said, reaching out and touching his cheek.
