Rick Wayne's Blog, page 96

New Release! Your second-to-last chance to discover The Minus Faction

“Hits all the feels. I teared, laughed, cringed, choked on coffee, held my breath while reading one hundred miles per hour!” -advance reader review

The penultimate episode of my serialized superheroish sci-thriller THE MINUS FACTION is now available.

“This series is one of my favorite things. Messy and real and hard and beautiful.”

In Episode Six . . . Lost in the aftermath of betrayal, the members of the team wander alone through the ruins of their lives, searching in vain for hope. In their absence, a new enemy rises to eclipse all others.

Isolated and absent the Prophet’s prescient protection, John and company fall one-by-one to their new foe as the countdown ticks to its end.

“Some of the best, most evocative writing ever! Tears and laughter at the same time!”

Check out an excerpt below.

Anders Benet had murdered his mother in the womb.

He had no memory of this, nor could he say he intended the woman any harm. Indeed, it wasn’t until his fourteenth year that he killed anyone intentionally. That was the year his middle-aged gym teacher learned, just before she died, what a mistake it was to humiliate him in front of his fellow students, a fact she attested to repeatedly, over and over as she begged for her life, before Anders choked the childless woman to death by shoving her own bloody ovaries down her throat.

It was a messy kill, to be sure, and poorly planned, and he was very nearly caught. But then he had been in a hurry, a rush to consummate his first orgasm of violence. For he had learned something about himself not two weeks before, a simple truth about his past that changed everything, and that would come to change the world. His uncle, drunk and filled with guilt, had finally shared the circumstances of his mother’s death. The family had remained tight-lipped out of fear of upsetting the child during his most sensitive years. No one wanted to suggest her passing was his fault.

But it was.

Baby Anders had had fits. Not often. In fact, there weren’t more than five through the entire pregnancy, and the first few lasted mere minutes. But as the fetus grew, so did the paroxysms, and by the last, Anders’s nineteen-year-old mother drove herself to the hospital in severe, cramping pain. At first everyone assumed she was giving birth—a full nine weeks early—but as soon as it was clear that was not the case, the doctors began scratching their heads. As they ran test after test and debated the risks of removing the fetus so prematurely, baby Anders continued his dark episode—the longest one yet—and so managed to aggravate an existing bruise. Five agonizing hours later, he triggered a hemorrhage, and very quickly his mother’s death.

Uncle Mik had explained all of this with his eyes cast to the floor. More than one tear dribbled into his beer, which he drank nonetheless. And never once did he look at his nephew. He couldn’t. Besides being a frail man with horrible nystagmus, Mik Van Veen was a coward.

When, after a long silence, the man finally turned to face his nephew’s shock, guilt, and anger, he saw nothing of the sort.

He saw only peace.

And then something more.

The older man recoiled as the boy threw a smile across his face—casually, the way a model might toss a scarf over her shoulder.

Young Anders was relieved. For he knew then that the fits he had been fighting his entire brief life—fits so dark he dared not share the full details—were not an anomaly, a deviation, as his teachers had led him to believe as they walked him to the corner to calm down. They were, in fact, the deepest, realest part of himself. The larva he had felt squirming in his skull, and which drove deep and abiding urges, hadn’t infected him from without. It wasn’t an alien or a demon. It was an organ, like any other.

But unlike any other.

Deep inside the young man’s chest, his heart bared a razor-toothed grin. Whatever else he was going to be in life, Anders Benet knew then—rightly, peaceably—that he would be a murderer, and that he would take from the world everything the black maggots in his head had promised.

And more.

But first, he knew, he had to be perfect. Above suspicion. So he practiced glamour. Charm. He smiled. And people smiled back. He became a model. He sang in a choir. He seduced a Dutch minister—a right-wing bigot in his fifties with a young wife, an older ex, and three children—and so secured appointment to a prestigious university. He played sports and entertained tasteful dalliances. He befriended everyone. At graduation, he was asked to join a small software startup that would eventually make him wealthy. Then came a brief stint in European football, to cement his masculine appeal, before entering politics. And shortly after his forty-second birthday, Anders Benet won a seat on the European Commission.

And every time the black maggots stirred, there was another kill—sometimes several. Like the swinging couple he had murdered the very week of his appointment. He met them online, and in the middle of their love-making, he killed the wife while the husband watched, incapacitated. He took his time. He enjoyed it. Not the killing so much. The horror in the man’s eyes.

For it wasn’t enough simply to kill. That was no great effort. Any street thug with a gun could slaughter. It was the power, the power that validated his dark destiny, the one forged in his mother’s womb, the one that stoked his patience.

And the higher he rose—in business, in politics—the more his allies had to lose, by association, if his true passions came to light, and so the easier it was to manipulate them into hiding certain relevant facts. It was simply a matter of playing on their self-interest. And giving them a single reason to doubt any of it was true, even a mediocre one. For the selfish will always choose a convenient lie over an inconvenient truth.

Still, it was true that for most of his life he felt incomplete, like a king in search of a country.

Until one day, while sitting on the Commission, enduring his hundredth meeting on farm subsidies in the east, mind wandering to the previous night’s entertainment—a Turkish intern he’d raped after mangling her with a pair of forceps—he noticed a symbol on one of the documents, a symbol he wasn’t supposed to see.

Three circles connected in the center by three lines.

And when, after weeks of patient investigation, its meaning was finally made clear, Anders actually stood in a quiet hallway with his mouth agape, feeling as though he had just plucked the sword from the stone. He even looked at his palm as if it held the weapon. Here was his sword. All he need do was wield it and the kingdom would be his. All those promises the black maggots had whispered, the ravings that sent him to the corner in grade school, the whooping screams that kept him awake at night, all of it would finally come true.

And now, a full fifteen years later, he was mere days away from absolute victory. He had burned away the last vestiges of Anders Benet, cultivated fraud. Murderer. And had emerged his true self. And as he stood looking out from his castle, he knew that he had finally arrived. That ultimately, finally, everyone who had stood in his way, everyone who could stop him, had been beaten or stayed. All of them.

Save one.

The very last.

The Red King turned to see the prisoner roll into the room in his wheelchair…

Episode One is permanently free and available here.

Episode Six is here.

And coming early 2017, my five-course occult mystery, THE HERETIC ARCANUM:

Why is there nothing to watch?

Most of us have had the experience, probably quite recently, of scrolling through literally hundreds of movies on Netflix and not being able to find a single thing. Last night I ended up switching to my cable company’s On Demand section and still came up empty.

But then something interesting happened. On social media, a friend posted about an old B-movie he was watching, a real incoherent disaster of an 80s sci-horror, and I realized I had way more interest in that than any of the “legitimate” films I had just forsaken.

Now, ratings are subjective, of course. As an author, I see it all the time. I remember one guy who — it was obvious — only rated books that he enjoyed, meaning in his world even a one-star book wasn’t bad. Bad books simply didn’t rate at all. It seemed a little wonky to me at first, but then I realized it’s a bit like Michelin’s system of rating restaurants. There are only three stars available, only the very best restaurants in the world are even considered, and a Michelin one-star restaurant is a damned fine meal. In fact, out of all the chefs in the world, only a handful ever get a three-star rating, which is like the gold medal of chefery.

Okay, fair enough. But there does seem to be a generally implied continuum that puts romance below contemporary lit, or superheroes below art house films. Only the taco truck on the corner isn’t trying to be Noma, or (the now-closed) El Bulli. Tastes are not just subjective, as in variable across individuals. They also vary across time within the same individual. You wouldn’t eat at Chez Francois every day even if you could. Sometimes you just want a damned good burger. Or a taco.

So it is with narrative fiction. A trashy romance novel isn’t trying to win the National Book Award. Comparing them on the same scale is kind of ridiculous. But there are bad trashy romances and good trashy romances, same as anything, and when you’re in the mood for a trashy romance — and who isn’t from time to time? — then you want to read a good one, not a National Book Award winner.

You can see this clearly with hotels, which can be rated on more or less objective grounds — on the presence or absence of certain amenities, for example, along with location, price, and so on. Hotels have both a star rating and a customer rating. A three-and-a-half star chain hotel on the interstate isn’t trying to be a five star resort, and when customers give it five stars, it’s not because they’re deluded about what a five-star hotel should be. It’s because they understand intuitively the genre of a three-and-a-half star hotel and are telling you it’s a great version of that.

Taco trucks, three-and-a-half-star hotels, and trashy romances operate inside an intelligible structure that you learn but are never taught, a whole system of signs and signifiers in your head that you can read instantly but whose rules you could never articulate (at least not without training and effort). But sitting on top of it all, like a schoolyard bully, is that damned continuum of “quality.”

I think my first book, FANTASMAGORIA, is a three-star book in the sense that it’s not trying to be any more than a grotesque, if also thoughtful, romp full of pulpy characters and pop culture references, but I would argue it’s a five-star three-star book. And in fact, one of the best reviews I’ve gotten — articulate, fair, thoughtful, and positive — gave the book three stars for reasons that totally made sense to me.

This is the problem with so many of the books and movies I abandon. Call it the Sharknado phenomenon, where a bad movie can be perfectly enjoyable if it’s a good bad movie, which is exactly what we mean when we say we want to watch something good. We’re not saying we want Birdman or The Grand Budapest Hotel (neither of which I’ve seen). We’re saying we want a movie that does an excellent job of achieving what it set out to, even where that is not very grand.

The other week I watched the original Conan the Barbarian, which seems a perfect example of this. On its merits, it’s an excellent film and I enjoyed it far more than the recent remake because it exists in perfect balance with its aims. Same for Bridge of Spies, which seems to have gone largely unnoticed despite being one of Spielberg’s better movies. It’s not high cinema, but then it never once falls short of its ambition, like A.I. did.

Soap operas and professional wrestling persist forever by self-consciously exploiting this structure. When you tune into soap opera or wrestling, you’re expecting two-star melodrama, and the more ridiculous twists and dramatic zooms it unabashedly packs into an hour, the better you feel.

As standard TV shows reach their third and fourth seasons, they often resort to the same bag of plot devices as the soap opera, or any serial fiction: false deaths, evil doppelgängers, long lost children, miraculous recoveries, and so on. Where those devices appeal to us in soap operas and comic books, they immediately feel tired on prime time, which is otherwise full of self-consciously four- and five-star properties.

Incidentally, this is also why, if you’re going to fail, it’s better to fail spectacularly. A mediocre book or movie is merely forgettable, but those that misjudge themselves so completely that they fall off the scale entirely become excellently awful, the paradigmatic example of getting it wrong. The Eye of Argon comes to mind, or Plan 9 From Outer Space.

the reason there’s nothing on is not that authors and filmmakers are aiming too high. The fact is, excellence is hard at any level, and just because someone can write very good contemporary literature doesn’t mean they could write an excellent trashy romance. I suspect a Wes Anderson action movie would be about as good as Ang Lee’s Hulk.

The scale itself is wrong — the supposed continuum of quality, from comedy at the bottom to tragedy at the top. A “five-star two-star” film, like Big Trouble in Little China, will always be more excellent than a “three-star four-star” film, like all those wannabe tear-jerkers you scroll through endlessly on Netflix.

 

cover image by Shintaro Kago

Sneak Preview of the mini-adventure that opens Episode Seven of THE MINUS FACTION

Six days ago  . . .

 

The fight turned ugly within moments of its start. There was no trigger, no insult or questionable shot to the groin, but it was clear to everyone in the audience that the two men in the pit were filled with the rage to win and that one of them would have to be carried away.

The bald man with the beard stood a head taller than his opponent and was clearly the crowd favorite. Most of those in attendance had already seen him nearly decapitate a German mercenary the previous week. He was both bearded and bare-chested, both rarities for a street fighter, which seemed to be the point—to intimidate his opponents with both size and lack of fear. With each punch, spittle flicked from his lips in a thin spray that caught the single bare fluorescent light that illuminated the pit from above. A Chechnian military tattoo stretched across his hairy back, and there was a red skull painted crudely on his chest. Whether it was blood or pigment, no one could say.

The bald man connected for the third time, and his opponent’s head whipped to the side. But the man recovered immediately. Although shorter than his gargantuan rival, he was still tall, athletic, and seemingly impervious to pain. He wore a dark, featureless mask that matched the nondescript combat fatigues that covered the rest of his body. Just below his shoulders, a number six was hand-painted in white on both sides. He was taking a beating, but returned each punch in kind—sometimes doubling-up with two quick jabs—and what he lacked in strength, he made up in ferocity.

The largely African crowd fed on the spiraling aggression as the two fighters traded blows. The men had burst from their corners like runners off the block and proceeded to beat each other back and forth without pause and without any attempt to block or parry. At first, jostling onlookers moved casually through the stiff, salty air as they searched for space on the tiered rows of benches that surrounded the pit. But in just moments, as the slap-slap-slap of tit-for-tat strikes echoed off the walls of the hexagonal room, everyone in sight of the bout went to their feet, waving money, twirling colored towels, and whooping at the top of their lungs.

After five disappointing matches, they finally had what they came for. One of these two men would bring the pain.

But after several minutes, it became clear that jabs and crosses would put neither man down quickly, and the referee—a three-foot man in a neat dealer’s vest and slacks—rang the bell and the first round was called to the groan of the crowd. A pair of hats were passed, one marked with a skull and one marked with a six, but few in the crowd parted with any money. It wasn’t time. Yet.

“What do you think it means?” A thin Ethiopian with high cheeks spoke to the old man next to him as he passed one of the hats down the line.

“I’m sorry?” The old man lifted his head to the ceiling.

“The number. On the masked man’s arms. What do you think it means?”

“I’m afraid I can’t see it.”

The Ethiopian turned. The eyes of the man next to him were frosted gray, and they danced over the flapping red tarps of the ceiling. Although he couldn’t say why, he was immediately angry that a blind man was there. He turned back to the beating. “Why do you come to the fight if you can’t see?”

The second round was for mixed martial arts, and as soon as the bell rang, the combatants danced in a spiral around the beach-sand floor before launching into a series of blocks and kicks.

The masked man connected at the knee and the crowd hushed at the audible snap, and for a moment it appeared that the fifth match of the day would end early, just as all the others.

But the bearded man with the red skull roared with bulging eyes and got to his feet, and the battle resumed.

Everyone stood and cheered.

Except the blind man. “There’s more to a fight than the spectacle.”

The Ethiopian sat back down with the rest. “What is a spek-tackle?” he asked without turning from the contest. Perhaps he would find another seat. If one opened closer.

“You’ll see.” The old man’s head was oddly shaped and mostly barren, with just a few long wisps of gray hair that floated up and down gently in the hot breeze.

The bare-chested colossus punched with such force that the masked man flew into the plywood wall, which shook on loose nails. As he pulled away, one of the nails exited the flesh of his arm, trailing blood.

The crowd cheered again but groaned immediately as the little man rang the bell and ended the second round. The hats were passed again. This time both filled nicely.

The Ethiopian pointed. “Number Six wears a mask. Do you think it means something?”

The hats were collected impatiently and the referee counted the money in each. There was enough for machetes, but no more. A pair wood-handled blades was tossed to the sand. Some people cheered. Some booed.

“Why do they object?” the blind man asked.

“They had hoped for chainsaws. We have not seen a chainsaw battle in many weeks.”

“Which one did you pick, my friend?”

“The masked man. I like him. He is smaller, but tough.”

The old man smirked. “I hope you will not be disappointed.”

“What do you mean?”

The bell rang and the pair grappled for the machetes. With his mobility hampered, the bearded man hobbled forward and missed his weapon, but he tackled Number Six and ripped one free with bulging biceps. Blades met even as the masked man lay on the sand. The bearded colossus leaned over the crossed blades, using his weight to force them down onto his opponent.

But lying on his back, the masked man’s legs were free, and he kicked his opponent’s swollen knee twice, then in the balls three times, drawing mixed reactions from the stands as the beaded giant stumbled back. Six rolled away and got to his feet. He leaned over and gripped his machete with two hands, panting, as his adversary glowered with hate that, to the audience, seemed to presage the end of the bout.

The fighters faced each and circled the pit, machetes in hand. The red-necked giant hobbled, then swung. He was reduced to powerful but mostly wild swings, which the masked Number Six dodged easily. And so it became a battle of endurance rather than strength.

“You see?” The Ethiopian pointed, on his feet again along with most of the rest. “Six will win!”

The blind man kept his seat. “Of that, I am certain.”

Machete blades met again. Three time. Four times. Ten. The bearded man lunged again and his masked opponent spun out of the way suddenly, turning 360 degrees and bringing his blade down two-handed onto the giant’s scalp. There was a sharp crack and another burst from the crowd.

Number Six dropped the blade and leaned against the wall as rivulets of blood seeped into the already damp sand.

As the body was dragged away, Number Six limped to his corner and pulled the covering from his head, revealing a swollen and bloodied face.

The crowd hushed instantly.

“He” wasn’t a he at all.

A heavily-tattooed woman with short hair, like a soldier, drank from a bottle of water. She had swollen cheeks, one fat eye, and a cut lip that seemed already to be healing. A couple men in the audience booed, but most were too shocked to utter a sound.

Someone threw a beer bottle into the pit, and it almost struck the woman’s head, which brought everyone to their feet again and the jeering started in earnest.

The dwarf in the dealer’s vest fired a greasy revolver into the air, two-handed, and the crowd moved from deafening to merely unruly, hurling insults and shaking their heads as the woman wiped the sweat from her scalp and spat blood into a bucket.

She had light brown skin but wasn’t African. Hispanic, maybe, or native. She ignored the jeers and tended to the puncture wound in her arm.

The old man listened as the Ethiopian next to him turned livid at a presumed betrayal.

After a quick calculation by the fight’s organizers in the booth above, it was decided the decapitation had earned the woman enough points to face the latest champion, a new crowd favorite who had only been crowned three days earlier. Whether she actually had, by the rules, jumped three spots or not, no one cared. The crowd wanted blood. And they’d pay to see it.

The hexagonal auditorium went quiet as the woman bent and listened to the dwarf describe both the unusual opponent and the rules of a title match. Many grumbled, but then, even a woman had a right to know what she was facing.

The crowd whispered a name over and over between them. “Cano . . .”

When she nodded in assent, cheers burst with such force that the plywoods walls shook and the old man grimaced.

The Ethiopian tapped his shoulder. “Now you will see. Now Cano will show that bitch.”

“I’m afraid I won’t see anything, my friend. But if I were you, I would be careful about paying any more money.”

“Why? Marcel pays the cartels to run a clean fight. That is why we come. Your money is safe here. Not like with the Triads across town.”

“Oh, it’s not the little man I would worry about. Or the cartels. It’s the other two.”

The dwarf returned and explained that Cano wouldn’t face a woman. The crowd booed and the little man suggested they raise the stakes to entice him.

Wads of crumpled bills were passed man to man and dropped in hats and buckets as the titillated, half-drunk revelers gave the last of their weeks’ wages for a chance to see something none of them ever had before: a woman in a fight to the death.

The dwarf disappeared up the stairs again, and when he returned, there was quiet.

Then cheers as Cano appeared.

“This is the best night!” the Ethiopian exclaimed.

The roars and taunts faded as the crowd repeated the man’s name over and over. “Ca-no! Ca-no! Ca-no! Ca-no!”

The man was tall, but no taller than his opponent, nor even as muscular as the burly woman. He wore a hood and jeans. His face was covered in a colorful plastic mask, a red-and-blue devil dog held to his head by a thin piece of elastic. He raised his arms and the crowd fell silent. He pointed a gloved hand behind him.

The roars returned.

Chainsaws.

Within moments and without fanfare, motors revved loudly, drowning out the crowd, and the man and woman faced each other.

The dwarf rang the bell and the fighters wasted no time. They swung their saws amid clangs and sparks.

The old man kept his seat and felt the motion of the crowd around him. The Ethiopian was almost went cataleptic as his body tensed with each swing, each parry, waiting for the blow that would sever an arm in a splatter of blood—or a head.

But as the battle raged over five minutes, then ten, the fighters began to tire from swinging the heavy saws and dancing about. The woman named Six and the man in the devil dog mask were too evenly matched, it seemed, and each time one maneuvered to an advantage, the other would parry with a skillful roundhouse swing, or simply lean artfully out of the way and return with a thrust of their own.

Soon the crowd began to despair of the hero, and whispers fell into the pit amid shaking heads. Cano was supposed to handle the woman named Six easily. But she was wearing him down.

Cano the devil dog let his saw’s engine sputter, and so drew a death strike from Number Six. With his adversary bearing down on him, he met her saw with his and used her momentum as leverage to run his feet up the wall behind him in an attempt to flip and cut her in half. But the plywood cracked, and the man fell to the sand.

The crowd hushed as the woman was immediately upon him.

She swung hard as Cano tried to regain his feet. He parried on one knee, but with only one hand to his opponent’s two. The woman’s swing was deflected but not before her saw sliced through Cano’s shirt and tore into his left arm just below the shoulder. Blood hit the wall.

Cano dropped his saw as Number Six raised hers again.

She had him, and he raised his right arm out of instinct. The crowd gasped as the revving saw came down.

And stuck metal with a clink.

The crowd hushed.

The chain stopped and the engine sputtered to a halt as soon as it hit the man’s arm, tearing his sleeve and nothing else.

Cano reached for his silent saw and, grabbing it by the handle, swung it. It struck the woman across the forehead like a club and she stumbled back, blood dribbling into her eye. She yanked the cord on the weapon in her hand, trying to start the engine, but Cano went for it and knocked it to the sand. Then he swung his back and forth. The woman tried to defend herself, but the motionless chain tore at the skin of her arms all the same. In moments, the dog-faced man had struck her three times across the scalp and she went down.

The masculine crowd roared as the dwarf ran into the ring and declared the bout over. The woman was dragged away, and Cano watched as the diminutive referee counted a thick stack of bills into his hand.

“You see?” The Ethiopian turned.

But the blind man was gone.

 §§§

Artemis Killjoy, the half-machine once known as Barricade, tossed the devil dog mask into his bag, pulled his hood over his metal scalp, and walked onto the street, where cars and motorcycles fought the evening crowd for space. Clothes and colorful plastic trinkets hung from curved metal awnings, advertising the wares inside the identical square stalls underneath.

The mercenary kept his hands in his pockets and his head down as he walked the seven blocks to his temporary lodging, relying on his largely unseen face and a week’s worth of dark, curly facial hair to keep him invisible to the network—not that his former employers were likely have many people snagged in the slums of Dar es Salaam.

But you never knew.

He turned his face away from the men on the stairs of his apartment as he walked into the building and up three flights. Everything smelled of goat meat and incense. At the top, a heavy African woman with her hair wrapped in a high bun ignored him equally well as he ignored her as she closed her door behind her. The locals in this neighborhood, he had discovered, didn’t much care for those of mixed parentage.

Artemis stopped at the end of his hall. He didn’t need his faceplate sensors to tell someone was in his apartment, but he dropped his bag and took it out all the same. He pulled his hood back, revealing the grooved metal that replaced his scalp, and affixed the pointed hexagonal plate over his face.

As it locked with a click, his sensors booted and warning messages scrolled across his field of vision reminding him that his armor was missing along with his tactical limbs. He was reduced to the spindly medical prosthesis he picked up in Dubai until he could reach his stash in Tangiers: replacement limbs, tactical over-armor, and a second railgun.

He switched to infrared and scanned his apartment. A single occupant sat inside with no hint of a weapon.

Artemis tuned his high-frequency audio array, filtering out chatter and kitchen noise from the surrounding apartments and the sound of dogs fighting in the street.

A single heartbeat. And the unforgettable labored breath of a man he never thought he’d see again.

He looked around. There didn’t seem to be anyone else. And even if there were, everything he needed was inside the apartment.

Artemis walked down the hall and opened the door.

The Wisper sat in the cracked leather chair by the window, the one with the exposed arms and the missing leg.

“You’re in my bed.”

The old man jerked his head around, as if making a mental image of the room before he ascertained the meaning of the words. There was no mattress. “Ah. I see. You’ve been prospering, it seems.”

He nodded to the open squat toilet yawning in the floor of the water closet, the only other room in the flat. There was no door, and the faint stench of sewage wafted freely. The “kitchen” was directly adjacent and nothing but a single portable electric burner on a rolling, two-drawer cabinet.

Artemis leaned against the frame to catch his breath. He was tired from a full day of fighting. And apparently there was more to come. “Do me a favor. Pull that trunk out from the corner.”

The Wisper stood with a groan. “That was quite a fight.”

“You catch it?”

“I thought perhaps you noticed me in the crowd. You look different without the faceplate. Not as I expected.”

Artemis snorted and walked toward the open bathroom. “I thought you knew everything.” It was creepy the way the blind man built his sense of thing from the minds of those around him. “Still twisting the world to your will, I see. Like it’s a script in your head and the rest of us are just puppets being tugged in time with the tune.” Artemis hung his forearms from his elbows and wobbled his head.

“Script?” The old man’s frosted eyes danced over the ceiling as he tugged a long wooden crate free of the colorful knit blankets that covered it haphazardly. “The only performance I saw today was the one you gave in the ring. With inimitable Ms. Six.”

The mercenary turned on the water, and it dribbled brown into the once-white sink, now stained a permanent yellow, and fell through the black iris around the drain. “Betty’s always good for a score,” he said softly. She had needed the money just as much as him. Maybe more. He had split everything with her. They had plans to repeat the performance across town in a few days time.

“I wonder.” The old man cleared his throat.

“What’s that?”

“Which one of you would win in a fair fight.”

Artemis snorted. “Betty doesn’t fight fair. Never has. Don’t worry about her. She walked out of there with a fat wallet.”

The Wisper raised his eyebrows. “Still. A dangerous game.”

“What’s that?”

“Scamming the cartels. And all those men.”

Artemis cupped the water and ran it over the cut in his arm. It stung, and he hissed slightly. “Yeah. Well. The ‘men’ in this part of the world pay good to see a woman get beat. So fuck ’em. And as for the cartels . . . There are only two types of people in this world: the complicit, and the soon-to-be. If you’re not scamming, you’re being scammed.”

“Ah, yes. Misanthropy. Last stronghold of the coward.”

Artemis turned from the sink. “Coward?”

“Yes. Coward. It’s not difficult to despise. To kill. I should know. I’ve done it enough. We risk nothing. Boom. Dead. It’s over. And we feel powerful, don’t we? Righteous, even.”

The cyborg returned to the sink, now dribbled in pink, and kept washing his arm.

“There is no bravery without risk, Mr. Killjoy. To trust. To accept. To love, even. To relinquish the illusion of control. Of power. To place yourself—the only part of yourself that truly matters—in the care of others, knowing full well that one day they will you down. That is hard. That is courage. It’s much safer to just blow a man’s head off and keep moving.” The old man returned to his seat with a grunt.

Artemis looked at his guest in the mirror. “Whatever. You forget, I know you. You’re looking out for yourself, old man, same as anybody, so don’t expect appealing to my humanity will—”

“Humanity? What humanity? Every dollar you save goes to replacing some part of your body with a machine. You have no interest in humanity, Mr. Killjoy. I doubt you ever did.” The Wisper shifted in his chair from one side to the other. “And for a man who thinks so highly of himself, you’re not very intelligent.”

Artemis spun again. “Insulting me, on the other—”

“Are you threatened by the truth?”

“Is that what you call it?”

“Yes!” The old man yelled. “You’re embarrassed. Embarrassed that you lost. Embarrassed you had to run. Embarrassed you’re here, hiding. Embarrassed that I found you. Fighting in a pit for money. Like a dog. Or some strutting cock. I could feel it in your mind from the end of the hall.

“You think I went to all this trouble, found my way to this goat-stinking shithole, blind, to discuss humanitarian philosophy? You and I are in a position to help each other. I assumed my presence demonstrated the importance of the matter, but apparently not. And since we’ve already established I’m beyond your trust, along with the rest of the world, I’ll do as any reasonable person and appeal to your self interest instead.”

The cyborg waited. It was the only assent he would give. Truth was, it was nice to have company. And whether he brought trouble with him or showed up ahead of it, the old man was at least letting Artemis know it was coming.

The Wisper sat back like a villain on a throne. “In two days time, the world as we know it will end.”

The mercenary scowled under his faceplate. “The countdown isn’t up until next week.”

“I’m not talking about the countdown. Although there’s that as well. As I tried to explain to you and your colleagues, time is not a straight line. It is a bramble. Pulling one vine often tears another free. When I interfered with your team, I thought I was righting an imbalance. But there were repercussions.”

“Aren’t there always?”

“Sometimes. But not all of them are bad.”

“So what happens now? Wait! Don’t tell me. Aliens are coming.”

The blind man scowled. “There is at least one alien already here. What do you know of the people you faced in Chicago?”

Artemis wrapped his wound in gauze. The sooner he got his arms replaced, the better. “They’re powerful. Probably more than anyone realizes. They pulled one over on Veronika easy enough.” His colleagues had been unprepared. That wouldn’t happen again—not if Artemis were still on the team, anyway.

But he wasn’t.

“But?” the Wisper urged.

“They’re inexperienced. And way out of their league. They got lucky. We underestimated them. But sooner or later, luck runs out. It always does. The Prophet can’t protect them forever.”

“The Prophet doesn’t exist.”

Artemis turned his head.

“It’s a computer program. Built to beat the stock market by using vast quantities of metadata to predict the immediate future.”

Artemis scowled under his faceplate as he cut the gauze and fixed it tight. “So who’s been buying up all those arms? Running with the Faction?”

“The program’s author.” The Wisper paused. “An eleven year-old girl.”

The mercenary shook his head as he laughed out loud. “You should’ve stuck with aliens.”

The old man shrugged. “She is the most tangible threat I’ve ever witnessed.”

“Whatever.” Artemis walked out of the bathroom and opened the crate. There was a long bolt-action rifle inside, three clips, a string of cannister-shaped grenades, and a loaded German 9mm.

The Wisper’s eyes danced over the ceiling. “Did you know that when Captain Cook sailed around the Pacific, visiting all those little islands, he left stowaways?”

Artemis holstered the pistol. “What are you talking about?”

“Rats. On his ships. They had no natural predators on the islands and spread like wildfire. So predators were introduced. Cats. And snakes. But such creatures have more than a taste for rats, and they decimated the native species. The Law of Unintended Consequences.

“You were right about one thing, Mr. Killjoy. The team you faced is powerful. Too powerful, now. Thanks to me. And so the bearer of the Oric must survive. He must survive to face Ms. Andrews.”

Scarab.

Artemis wanted to spit. He could still feel the stiffness in his leg. Permanent frostbite. Damn near got him killed in the fights. “Survive? I thought you just said they were too powerful?”

“Indeed.”

Artemis waited. But the old man was silent. Whatever. “So you want me to save the kid?” Something must happen to him after he runs into Scarab, something the old man wants to make sure takes place.

“No. I want you to take your revenge on the woman who beat you and forced you into exile.”

“Ha. The others would kill me before I got the chance. Haven’t you heard? The ‘emperor of the world’ has promised me to the Vorgýrim.”

“What did you expect? You like no one and so no one likes you. You’re selfish, have a bad attitude, and are constantly insubordinate. In a word, you’re an asshole, Mr. Killjoy. What’s more, you’re not a true believer. If I were in The Red King’s shoes, I imagine I would have made the same trade.”

The cyborg threw his bloody towel over the door. “Your concern is touching, old man. But when do we get to the part about what’s in it for me?”

“In approximately 18 seconds.”

Artemis snorted in derision. He crossed his arms and started a countdown inside his visor. The numbers appeared in the lower right of his visual field. He watched the jumble of microseconds as the timer ticked to zero.

But nothing happened.

“Time’s up.”

“I said approximately.”

Artemis opened his mouth to speak but stopped as his entire visual field turned red. The proximity alarm he’d installed downstairs was set to track armed visitors. Someone was already in the building. He switched his vision to infrared and scanned the floors beneath his feet. He counted seventeen, plus a dark hole—a heat-less mass in the shape of a woman. They had the whole building surrounded.

“Fuck.” He was in no condition to fight Scarab, let alone that many others. Without his armor. Without his railgun. He looked to the Wisper.

“Now.” The blind man stood. “If you want to live, you’ll do exactly as I say.”

The mercenary lifted the rifle and slung the grenades over his shoulder.

The old man stepped back. “You know the building across the street?”

Artemis brought the bolt of the rifle back to confirm a bullet was in the chamber. Armor piercing. Just like the rest.

He nodded.

“Without stepping in front of the window, shoot through the third window from the left, top floor.”

Artemis spun and switched back to infrared. Sure enough, there was a sniper down on one knee. He fired. The weapon was loud and the recoil was heavy. People on the street yelled and ran.

The bullet went through the brick of his apartment and hit the man in the chest. He was wearing body armor, and the round had lost enough force that it didn’t kill him, but he was down.

The Wisper was already crawling out the window to the fire escape.

“We’ll be trapped on the roof,” the cyborg objected.

“You must trust me.” The blind man didn’t stop. He just started feeling his way up.

“Fuck.” The mercenary slung the rifle over his shoulder and followed. But the old man was slow. “Hurry!”

At the top, someone had put plywood across the gap in the buildings, and the pair went across one at a time as their pursuers came up behind them.

Artemis kicked the wood away as they opened fire from the door of the stair well.

That was stupid. Should have waited for a closer shot.

The Wisper was already out of range. He pointed to the base of the water tower the rose over the roof. “Throw a grenade at the far support.”

The mercenary pulled one from his belt. “This is a Christian mission.” He tossed and stepped in front of the old man with his back to the blast.

“So?”

The concussion hit him hard and he stumbled into his new ally. “And here I thought I was cold.”

The tower leaned and fell over the gap. It cracked on the side of the squat apartment block, and wave of water ran across the roof and fell to the street, where people were ducking for cover.

As the mercenary and his companion made for the next rooftop, Artemis turned to see Scarab emerge from the stairs and walk past her men on the ground. As she strode, the pool of water froze solid in an expanding circle from each footstep.

She turned to the men freeing themselves from the ice. “Building by building.” She stormed back to the stairs and pulled out her radio. “Target is mobile. Send the gunship.”

 §§§

Artemis fed the last clip into the rifle, pulled the bolt, pushed it forward, and took aim. He was trapped with the old man inside in a classroom on the third floor of the mission. The mercenary had chosen a room facing a narrow alley on the east side. There was only a few feet between the buildings, meaning there wasn’t enough space for anyone to rappel down from the roof. He had tilted a number of desks and chairs in the hall. It was an effective barricade, and he was so far doing a reasonable job of keeping anyone from getting out of the stairwell.

He fired again. The bullet pierced the steel door and impacted block concrete.

But he was running out of ammunition. And he’d used the last of the grenades booby-trapping the door, which had bought them just enough time to settle in.

The Wisper turned his head sideways, as if catching wind of a faint odor or listening to a distant sound. “We don’t have much time.”

“No shit.” Artemis moved his head in the same way. The sound was distant, faint. But unmistakable. “Chopper inbound.”

Fuck. Scarab wasn’t taking any chances. He wondered if he should feel honored.

The cyborg listened to the men in the stairwell pulling back. He leaned the rifle against a sideways desk and walked to the middle of the room. There had to be a way out of there.

The helicopter hovered overhead, and its heavy blades chopped in the air in deep staccato thuds.

The Wisper felt his way along a row of cabinets covered in children’s artwork and dropped to the floor under a poster of the human body.

Through his sensitive audio filter, Artemis heard the cock of a very heavy machine gun. “Shit.”

He dove toward the old man as bullets ripped through the building. Papers flew about with gravely debris as sockets burst and windows shattered. The chopper was sweeping the floor, and after a short pause, the rain of bullet continued again from the opposite direction.

“We can’t stay here!” The mercenary pressed his hands to the ground, ready to push himself up after the next pass. Assuming he survived.

But the old man held up a hand. “Wait.”

“Wait?”

The bullets streamed through the wall, focusing on the makeshift barricade the cyborg had constructed. Artemis watched helplessly as desks and chair flew apart and his only rifle splintered into pieces. No way he’d make it out with only a sidearm.

The Wisper pointed.

Artemis turned his head. The stream of artillery fire had cut a hole in the wall of the mission next to a window, and there was room for the two men to leap through a similar hole in the next building across the narrow gap.

So that’s what the old man was waiting for.

The mercenary didn’t hesitate. He jumped as the helicopter circled the building. He didn’t look to see if the old man followed. Right then, he didn’t much care.

The third floor was offices. Real estate, apparently. The second floor was part of a small department store. Both had been evacuated as soon as the shooting started.

“What are you doing?” The Wisper hobbled down an aisle between racks of clothes.

“Getting out of here.” The cyborg had acquired some nylon. “See you around, old man. Thanks for the chat.” Artemis walked toward the front. He glanced at the shelves of brightly packaged food next to him. He stuffed a pack of snack cakes into a pouch on his pants.

“You think it’s an accident that four of the most unusually talented people in the entire world just happened to stumble into each other right when the world needed them to?”

“You said the Prophet was a ghost.”

“Indeed. Making it all the more suspicious, don’t you think?”

The mercenary stopped. “Who are we talking about?” The Americans were clueless. The Russians and the Chinese were playing ball. The Faction was a joke. And there wasn’t a corp yet operating at this level. Too risky for a publicly-traded commercial entity.

“There is something else. Something larger. Beyond your former masters. Beyond the Vorgýrim. Beyond the hive mind and its endless scheming.”

“As far as I can see, you’re the only one with the schemes.” Artemis shook his head and turned back for the stairs, raising one finger to the sky. “And I told you aliens would come into it eventually.”

The Wisper followed with a limp. “I never said aliens. I am agnostic on the source, in fact.”

“Then how—”

“One can see a shadow around a corner without seeing that which casts it. You don’t have to believe me, Mr. Killjoy. But don’t tell me you don’t have your own suspicions about those four.”

Artemis turned around again on the landing between floors. “Okay. Let’s say you’re right. It still doesn’t have anything to do with me.” It was half challenge, half question.

“Doesn’t it? If the machine goes live, The Red King will be able to find you anywhere on the earth. Not even you can run forever. Surely you know that.”

“Look who’s talking.”

The Wisper nodded. “But then, you and I aren’t the only ones who want to ensure that machine never reaches its apogee.”

Artemis shook his head. “Something tells me I’m really not going to like this next part.”

The old man stepped forward with dancing eyes. “You must surrender to the Vorgýrim. It’s the only way.”

Artemis dropped his head. Yup.

“They’ve agreed to trade for you, sent their Russian colleagues to conduct daylight business. They’re waiting a few blocks from here.”

Artemis snorted. Scarab was awfully sure of herself. Her and Veronika were practically twins. For all her tinkering, Maria never could get either woman to listen.

“Ask yourself, why would the Vorgýrim trade for you? Why not Ms. Andrews, or Ms. Molotov herself?”

The cyborg was silent.

“You are an experienced soldier, a mercenary with a certain reputation. Everyone knows you’re not a true believer. But you have tactical expertise and detailed information about the China facility stored inside that head of yours.”

Artemis lowered his face. It was a slaughter in Uzbekistan. Veronika and the others were so confident in the master plan, it didn’t once occur to them there might be serious repercussions. The Vorgýrim would never be satisfied with a few heads, not after losing an entire clan. They would send a message. Honor demanded they return the favor in kind. Slaughter for slaughter.

In the middle of that was no place to stand.

Artemis walked down the open stairs.

The Wisper walked to the railing. “Where are you going?”

Nothing.

“Do you understand? If the bearer dies now, the world is finished!”

A red-face soldier came around the corner at the end of the hall, dressed in full SWAT gear. He had followed the pair through the hole. The Wisper had sensed him coming, and a single man was no threat. He turned with a scowl to spike the man’s mind, exactly as he’d done numerous times.

But in the moment he inserted himself, he saw flashes of a family. Of a small child with leukemia. Of a worried mother. Of hospital bills and a need for money. The man hadn’t been told who he was after. Just that they were criminals.

Filled with the laughter of children, the embrace of a spouse, weekends going to soccer games and mowing the lawn, the Wisper did the unthinkable.

He wavered.

The soldier’s rifle swung around as he turned the corner. There was nowhere to hide in the open hall by the stairs.

A shot.

The soldier fell.

Wisper turned to see the cyborg riding a motorcycle up the stairs.

“Tell me again how you and Lady Death managed to get out of that silo alive.” He holstered his sidearm and revved the engine. The wheels bounced up the steps to the second floor. “They’re gathering outside.”

The old man was visibly shaken. And confused. He cleared his throat and tried to compose himself, but his gyrating hands gave it away.

The gunship flew overhead.

“Ms. Andrews had to believe it was all her doing,” he said softly with a crack in his voice.

“Yeah. Right.”

“I don’t know what . . .” He stopped. Something was wrong with him. He was . . .

Captain Regent.

That was it.

That would not do. That would not do at all. But he would have to deal with it later.

“Take care of yourself, old man.” Artemis Killjoy revved the bike’s engine and jolted up the next flight of stairs.

Up. Not down.

The Wisper nodded. The mercenary was going to fight. It was time for him to go.

 §§§

A motorcycle crashed through the upper floor windows and flew into the air.

“Shit!” The pilot pulled the stick hard to the left as the bike nearly struck the helicopter and fell through a roof below.

The maneuver turned the chopper on its side as it moved, and the gunner looked up just in time to see a metal-faced man let go of a swinging rope and fall through open air right at him.

He struck the gunner and nearly knocked him from the vehicle, but the man’s brace held him tight. The pair struggled struggled as the pilot gained altitude.

“Target inside! Target inside!”

The co-pilot turned to shoot the intruder, who kicked the man’s hand, sending the shot wide.

The gunner wrapped his left arm around the mercenary’s neck and locked it in place with his right, trying to choke the man, but Artemis’s left shoulder and the left side of his chest was encased in metal, and the rim of it kept his airways open eve as the gunner squeezed with all his strength.

The cyborg kicked the copilot again, then kicked the man’s seat to push the gunner to the back wall. He reached down and pulled the man’s sidearm and in one smooth move, shot the copilot in the head, then the pilot, then the gunner in the leg. The man released his grip as he shrieked in pain, and Artemis turned, kicked him to the back wall again as he pushed the aircraft stick forward amid the screech of warning sirens.

The chopper headed right toward a brick building . . . where Scarab stood watching the action. She turned for the stairs as Artemis shot the gunner and jumped from the aircraft.

As he fell twelve meters to a nearby roof, he turned just in time to see the blades of the tilting copter chop through brick before crashing into the building and exploding in a massive fireball.

 §§§

Three Russians on motorbikes were stopped on the road in front of an open van. Seven more men with automatic rifles paced inside. They were here for a trade. But as they watched the flames from the chopper consume the building down the road, it looked like that wasn’t going to happen. The fire was spreading amid a cacophony of sirens and wails.

A man with bleached-white hair and a stout set of Siberian prison tattoos stepped forward from the back of the van and zipped open the black body bag on the floor. There was an Asian kid inside, unconscious.

He looked at his watch. He stood. He drew his side arm. He cocked it. He pointed it at the kid’s head. He looked at his watch again. He released the safety.

One of the men on bikes called out, and the white-haired man looked up to see a figure emerge from flame. A pointed hexagonal plate covered his face. His scalp was metal, as were his left shoulder and most of that side of his chest. His entire right leg and his left leg from the knee down were completely artificial, as was his right arm, but the prosthesis lacked covering and so were thin and spindly.

The metal man’s clothes were half on fire, and he tore them off as he walked toward the van. All weapons pointed to him, but he neither flinched nor raised his hands.

“Let’s just get this over with.” He stepped into the back of the van. “And you fuckers owe me some snack cakes.”

When Criticism is the Best Medicine

When you start writing, you have the ambivalence of a toddler who both wants help down the stairs and wants to do it himself. You know you need critical feedback, but you’re inexperienced, unsure of your work — which we authors often conflate with our selves — and therefore wary of the sting. Those of you afraid of needles will know that feeling, that sometimes the best medicine hurts.

And constructive criticism IS the best medicine. I’ve said multiple times now (and will go right on saying) there is only one bit of writing advice in the whole entire world:

Write

Solicit constructive feedback

Critically evaluate feedback

Repeat

That’s it. You really don’t have to read another “Top Ten Tips for Writing” article ever again.

But that second step can really sting, especially when you recognize the feedback is valid. (If you rarely have that experience, it’s not proof of your talent. It’s proof of your ego.) And I know quite a few folks who are afraid of it.

I don’t know what to say to them except you gotta get over it. It’s like learning to swim: at some point you’re just gonna hafta go in the deep end. There’s not really another way. Wade up to it if you want, but it’s not gonna get any shallower.

This is especially true because the sting never really goes away. Just like the pinch of the nurse’s needle, the hurt is still there, but eventually it happens enough times that you internalize there’s nothing to fear.

Or so I’ve been saying. But this morning I got my first few bits of feedback on the (new) Episode Six, and a very good point was raised, and I genuinely surprised myself when my legit first reaction was Yuss! Schweet. No sting. Just excitement.

Please interpret this correctly. I’ve not “leveled up” or anything. In fact, I’m sure I’ll still feel the pinch sometimes (as well as the frustration that comes from recognizing the manuscript you worked on for months needs a major rewrite), but I think I’ve iterated the feedback process enough that I can quickly parse what is useful from what isn’t — where any single person’s feedback will have a mix of both.

Because here’s the deal. I don’t just wanna be good. I wanna be EXCELLENT. World-class, even. And I don’t think you get there by smiling weakly and hoping for praise. At the same time, I’ve learned there’s not much value in asking people to “bring the pain” either. If you ask readers to go fishing, they’ll come back with a whopper of a tale.

What you want is their legitimate top-of-mind reaction. As such, critical feedback can only identify flaws. But there’s nothing that says a flawless plot, for example, is an enjoyable one. Excellence is not the mere absence of fault. In fact, we’ve all read books that we thought were excellent, timeless even, that had a few faults.

I suspect excellence comes — if it all — only from that last step: Repeat.

cover image by Esao Andrews

I wanna talk about the dissolution of my marriage

It’s not a secret. But it’s not something I bring up regularly either. I suppose I was a victim, although I don’t think of myself that way, at least not anymore. All of it — the sickness, the lies, the abuse — have become no less than, but also no more than, the pivot of my life so far, the fulcrum around which everything else has turned.

Of course that’s not how it started. When I was thinking of asking my ex-wife to marry me, one of my concerns was that she might be too positive! I was a recovering cynic, and we should all want a spouse who shares our worldview, or who at least can easily tolerate it. I thought then, and still think now, that marriage is about the big things. It’s not necessary to find someone who, for example, likes the same music and movies as you. Over the course of your lives, those things are just as likely to change as not, and if you can’t stop what you’re doing to take a legitimate interest in your spouse’s hobbies, whatever they are, then you’re not mature enough for marriage. That’s not to say you have to do everything together — that’s disaster — or that you need to enjoy their hobbies as they do, but you should enjoy THAT they do. You should enjoy their enjoyment.

At some point, my ex-wife started to get sick. She would get hives. Her skin would itch and swell, filling 3/4 of her back or one whole side of her leg all the way down to the ankle. She would get up from the couch and and go immediately to the toilet to vomit. She had severe lethargy. She had a highly irregular, almost non-existent cycle. And so on.

So she went to the dermatologist for the hives, the gastroenterologist for the vomiting, the gynecologist for the irregularity, and the internist for the lethargy. She was diagnosed with gastroparesis, polycystic ovarian syndrome, and some other crap. And it was all there. But there was no Dr. House around to put it all together. No one asked why all of these things appeared within six months of each other, and didn’t that indicate something larger behind?

With the physical symptoms came the changes in mood. At first it was easy enough to chock it all up to stress. I mean, look at that list. It fucking sucks! I felt so bad. I kept asking “Do you need anything? Do you need anything?” And keep in mind that at the time she had just moved out of law school and into a very elite intellectual property firm in DC. Life was tough. And I was her husband.

Not that my job wasn’t also stressful. I was a junior executive in a transitioning firm — at one point we had three CEOs in a two-year period, and I moved through five different bosses — with an hour-plus commute each way. For various reasons that I don’t regret, we bought a house in NoVA that was much closer to her job than mine in Columbia, MD, but the result was that, counting the commute, my minimum work week was 60 hours, with regular spikes well above that. Weekdays left little time for anything but getting ready for and then to and from work. Laundry, cleaning, yard work, grocery shopping, and the rest were usually saved for weekends.

But we had a nice 3-bedroom townhome in a safe neighborhood with good schools. We had two beautiful dogs and a pair of newish cars. We had cash in the bank. We were going to start a family, and so I didn’t choke on the schedule. I thought it was better to hustle then, before the kids came, so that I could hit cruise control in a VP position later and have resources for braces, college, and some good life experiences like travel. Children should come first.

As my wife got sicker, I took the lead on doing the housework, which only seemed fair. It wasn’t her fault she was ill. We were partners, and that meant sharing the load, including the added burden of sickness.

One Saturday, after another stressful week, I got up and cleaned the kitchen from the previous night’s dinner, which both of us were too tired to clean. I took out the trash. I did the laundry. I let my wife sleep in.

About 10:00, roughly five minutes into my well-earned appointment on the couch with David Attenborough, my wife rushed downstairs, hair all a mess, and says I needed to get ready, we were leaving soon.

“For where?” I asked.

She said we’re going to some kid’s birthday party — a kid whose name I didn’t recognize and don’t remember — and that it was starting soon and we still needed to go to the toy store to get a gift.

I asked who this kid even was, setting aside the larger issue for the moment that this was the first I had heard of any of it.

Turns out, he was a friend of our nephew — her sister’s son’s schoolmate, all of maybe seven years old.

I asked if we had ever met these people.

No.

I asked if she told me about this before and I forgot, which I freely admitted happened more than I would have liked.

She said no.

I said I was tired. I’d just spent all morning cleaning. And that after a long week at work, I wasn’t going to rush out to a birthday party for a seven-year-old I had never met and would probably never see again, but if that’s how she wanted to spend her Saturday, she was free to. I wouldn’t even ask why. Frankly, I was too tired to give a shit.

What followed was EIGHT HOURS of fighting. She never went to the toy store, or to the party, but she did accuse me of not loving her, of trying to sabotage her relationship with her family, of not caring about anything that was important to her (which apparently didn’t include me), and so on. Eight hours, man.

Eight fucking hours of arguing.

At some point, when I’m sure I said something in a less-than-helpful way considering how confused and frustrated I was that we couldn’t just put this behind us, she raised her fists in the air, and with a snarl on her lips — literally, like something out a cartoon — began beating on me, two-fisted.

I was shocked.

What the hell was happening?

Who was this person? And what had she done with my oh-too-positive wife??

Now, I’m a pretty big guy, so I can’t say it hurt too much. But as any survivor will tell you, it’s not the physical pain that lasts. And so afterward I did exactly what everyone else does. I said it must be some kind of anomaly. After all, it had never happened before. At that moment, it wasn’t immediately clear it would ever happen again.

But of course it did.

It’s a common myth that men aren’t at serious risk from domestic violence. I remember keenly one night where things were very bad, enough that I had to retreat to the couch downstairs. I turned it on the floor so that I could lay on my back facing the stairs. I left the stairway light on so that if she came, her shadow would move across my face and I would wake up. Because the shit she was saying and the way she was acting was so angry and nonsensical, I wasn’t entirely sure she wouldn’t come down with a knife…

Normal psyches have checks in place that keep us from being the worst versions of ourselves. We all can be irrational, selfish, and mean. But adult people have the daily sensation of taking a deep breath, sucking it up, and going on with life.

My ex-wife lost that barrier, that filter that tells us what is and isn’t fair and appropriate. So in some sense, it’s accurate to say the person she became was always there, as some folks close to me have claimed. But that’s not just incomplete, it omits the most relevant aspects of what happened. The sum total of who she was included that barrier. And it went away.

In the years since, I’ve heard a number of people — referencing some other case of domestic abuse — say something like “I don’t know why she stays with him. If a man ever hit me, I’d be all BYE FUCKER!”

It’s a nice thought. It’s also hopelessly juvenile. Every relationship is unique of course, just like the people in it, but I would guess a lot of women — a lot of PEOPLE — stay not so much out of fancy, but out of genuine, adult love. I made a commitment to my wife. I stood up in front of a crowd of people and said “in sickness and in health.” One month into the abusive period, two months in, six months in, and so on, you never have to face that all-or-nothing decision of whether to leave. It’s only ever about whether you’ll honor the commitment you made for one more day. That’s how life comes — one day at a time. And it never seems worth it to throw away a marriage for one more day.

Of course, that can’t go on forever, and eventually I had to leave. And I went back, as we all do. And I actually think that was the right decision. I told everyone at the time — friends and family that were very worried about me — that marriage was serious, and that regardless of her actions, I didn’t want to leave and then say in ten years “I wish I had stuck it out a little longer.” I didn’t go back for her. I went back for me. I went back so that future me — me right now — can look anyone in the eye and say without batting a lash that I fucking did every goddamned thing possible to make that shit work.

We tried counseling, for example. I found a pair of psychologists, an (unmarried, unrelated) man-and-woman team who worked in tandem. The first week we met one-one-one, like gender with like gender, and the second week we met as a group, and so on like that. At one point in group session, we got around to the subject of hitting. The female psychologist called it a “gating issue,” explaining that I said I was unwilling to proceed until the hitting stopped.

I wish you could hear how she said it. It was like I was holding things up, but that they recognized my feelings were valid and so were stopping the big show to deal with a “gating issue.”

Look. Physical violence is not a fucking “gating issue.” Physical violence is wrong. Period.

I didn’t go back.

My mother, actually, is a clinical social worker and has been for several decades. She specializes in anxiety and depression, but she also does marital work. She’s also been married for 50+ years. She was flabbergasted that two PhDs would act that way. Neither of us yet have a good explanation.

Soon after, the lying started. Or maybe it was there before and I just didn’t see it. I was certainly naive. I always thought a liar was someone who told an untruth. But that’s not how it goes. A liar is someone who tells a near-truth in such a way and in such circumstances that it leaves the hearer with a clear impression of something that isn’t the case, while leaving the liar with complete and plausible deniability. In fact, repeated verbatim in calm circumstances, their words often sound ambiguous at best, and innocuous at worst.

I don’t have a clear window into what my wife told others about me. I do know she was very adept at leading me to believe her sister or the dog walker or our neighbors or someone was critical of something I did, with the clear implication that they thought I was being a jerk. I do know that she would do things like promise we wouldn’t have to see her family at Christmas if I agreed to miss my family’s Christmas as well (so to isolate me), and a week or so after I agreed and informed my folks I wouldn’t be coming, she would reveal that her family expected us at a dinner in a few nights, and we should bring gifts — not because it was a Christmas thing, but because they would have gifts for us and we didn’t want to be rude.

She stole my computer and hid it in the trash. She stood in between my legs while I sat on the couch with her phone in her hand, having dialed 911 and with her thumb over the button, warning me that if I tried to get up or leave while she berated me, that was assault and she’d call the police and file charges. She was not only a woman, she was a minority and an attorney barred in our state of residence. I’m a white male with no knowledge of the law.

Fuck you if you think none of that matters.

At the end, it was my uber-conservative, gun-owning, FOX News-watching, married-to-one-woman-forever father who said that he appreciated my effort but that “marriage vows are reciprocal, son.” And when I told my ex-wife that I was leaving and wanted a divorce, she literally fell at my feet, pressed her cheek tightly to my shoelaces, wrapped her arms around my ankles, and — bawling loudly — begged for one more chance.

Literally. Like something out of a 1930s movie.

I knew it would make no difference, but I was considering if only for the personal satisfaction of being able to throw whatever came up — I was certain it would take less than 24 hours for there to be something — right back in her face. Not that it would do any good. But as it happened, she had a doctor’s appointment that day. She’s sick. Seriously sick. Legitimately sick. And for various reasons, she couldn’t miss the appointment.

But she wanted to. She didn’t trust that I wasn’t going to leave right then and there. Maybe she knew me better than I did.

And so, despite that not moments before she had been pressed to my stinky sneakers, crying and begging for me to stay, she turned to me as she left and delivered a warning dipped in acid. I wasn’t to leave. Or else something something about the dogs.

Wait, what?

What did those two things have to do with each other?

I looked at our two lovable Berners, who look only ever back at us with joy and expectation, loyally waiting to please.

I don’t remember her exact phrasing. But I remember the tone. I remember being stunned — again! (How could she keep doing that, even after everything??) I remember sitting in the chair motionless as her car pulled away thinking… Holy shit, she might actually hurt the boys to hurt me.

I grabbed them and a few essentials and got in my car and never looked back. I left my house and beautifully well-stocked kitchen and my furniture and my clothes and my books (!) and all of it. I drove two days to my parents’ house in Kansas. I didn’t answer her phone calls, despite that, on one occasion at least, she called 42 times in a row. I know because I had 42 missed calls from her, one after the next.

I had to go back one more time. She absolutely, vehemently refused to see me during the week. She orchestrated it so that I would officially leave her on her 30th birthday — exactly. I’m sure she’s gotten quite a bit of mileage out of that one. I’m sure she’s since told people that the time she jumped in front of me to keep me from taking a shower and bounced off (because, again, I’m a pretty big guy) that I had pushed her down. I know this because she looked up from the ground at that moment and said “You pushed me.” I’m sure I’ve become the bad guy in so many ways. I’m sure her family has explained the divorce to the neighbors and the relatives back in India by inflating my peccadilloes into dirigible-sized faults. I’m sure.

I don’t actually care. You may not believe this, but almost four years on, I just feel bad for her. I had loved her deeply. I had woken up so many days where the unspoken foundation of my being was that I would be with her for the rest of my life. I’m sad that this happened to her, that the person I married all but died, and that the person who took her place won’t seek treatment and so will probably never get the help she needs. There’s a hole inside her. And try as might, I could never fill it. No one can. It’s a tragedy if there ever was one.

I only bring it up because I’ve been thinking a lot about love lately. I didn’t expect I would ever fall in love like that again.

Turns out that was hogwash. And it may sound cliche to say, but what I left behind doesn’t even compare.

 

cover image by Kevin Cabral, used without permission

This Is The End! (Open Call for Beta Readers)

The sixth and final installment of my serial novel THE MINUS FACTION will soon be complete to beta draft. As such, I’m looking for readers willing to share top-line feedback on the manuscript — what worked and what didn’t with the plot, the pace, the characters, etc.

No worries if you haven’t read the earlier episodes. I can send them electronically. Just please be serious about reading and providing feedback on the last!

Open to all. It interested, please email me at RickWayneAuthor@gmail.com or just click here.

Can You Name the Most Successful Science Fiction Series in History?

Perry Rhodan is the title of the most successful science fiction series ever written, having sold more than 2 billion weeklies since it’s introduction in September 1961. The series now approaches some 2,900 novella-sized installments in the old pulp magazine format. Despite such phenomenal success, it remains relatively unknown outside Germany, although not for lack of effort. As with most early sci-fi, the initial episodes were aimed at younger readers, and so when they were translated into English and published by Ace in the 70s, there was not widespread enthusiasm and the effort ceased after the first ~130 issues.

The story borrows heavily from the science fiction canon, including elements such as Asimov’s positronic brain, and is exactly what you would expect from any long-running serial — from comics to soap operas — with a now-complex continuity that includes many side characters, spinoffs, alternate universes, dramatic resurrections, and so on. The eponymous hero is an American astronaut and part of the first moon landing, which the series creators (in 1961) placed ten years in the future in 1971, rather than the actual date of 1969, and has since expanded to produce an entire universe, including its own theory of superintelligent life.

Plots are told in arcs spanning 25-100 issues, with “grand arcs” spanning several smaller ones. The writing staff has turned over, of course, but several authors worked on the series for decades, and some their whole careers.

In the introduction to the first English-language edition, Forrest J. Ackerman — don of mid-century science fiction (who I’ve written about before) — said: “In Germany, all serious SF buffs claim to hate Perry Rhodan, but somebody (in unprecedented numbers) is certainly reading him.”

The spaceships have some fantastic cutaways.

How I Do It

One of the fringe benefits, I guess, of serializing longer works in shorter chunks, is that I’ve iterated a lot the last couple years. In fact, I’m about to produce my eighth title in the last 24 months. It’s really taught me how I write. Not how TO write. But how I do it.

Some people plot everything out, for example. Some people write by the seat of their pants. Most people are, like me, somewhere in between. In fact, I realized recently that I write as if completing a puzzle or restoring a work of art. To start, I assemble a scaffold: the basic conflict, the beginning, the ending, and what I call the turn. All of that happens before serious composition, although I may develop them by writing snippets of dialogue or unattached descriptions. The ending in particular is important. My beginnings can (and often do) change, but without a destination in mind, I’m not sure how any writer reaches a satisfying conclusion, except wholly by chance.

Then I jump around, literally and figuratively. Pacing helps me think, and I can often be seen wearing a path in the carpet while swinging my arms and making fists — silently, since the action is all in my head. I write whatever pops in. Sometimes all I have is notes for a setting, but more often than not that comes last. What comes first is long conversations with little to no attribution (although I know who’s talking) and no sense of what is going on or even where it’s taking place!

After free-floating dialogue, often what comes next is a key piece of action. Not the whole sequence, mind you. Just the critical turn that makes that scene, that whole chapter even, vital to the story. A rule for me is that each scene has to matter. It doesn’t necessarily have to be critical to the plot, but it must add something such that, if it were removed, pace or clarity would suffer — the discovery of an important clue, for example.

A good example of the opposite, and unfortunately a common one, is a scene where two characters wring their hands about all the terrible things going on. I’ve been guilty of this myself. Writers seem to think visible fretting creates suspense when really it’s just very tedious and anyway should be clear from the character’s reactions to the action. The rule for me is: Make each scene count. And not in some abstract “it helps the story” kind of way. I need to answer the question “What is all of this for?” and it’s that answer that often appears before any of the rest of the chapter, save the aforementioned dialogue.

These different always tidbits appear completely out of order — a conversation from chapter four, an action sequence from the middle, a setting for chapter one that foreshadows a critical reveal in the second act, etc. Right now I have bits and chunks of just about every chapter in Episode Six written (some more than others) but not one is to a complete draft. Several of them have long segments of dialogue without attribution or setting or descriptions or anything but two people talking, and all of them still have at least one unfilled gap in the text.

It may seem strange to write this way — I don’t know — but I think just about everyone is familiar with this process. It’s how we pretty much all go about completing a puzzle. You dump the pieces on a flat surface. You spread them out and see what you have. Does it look like fun? Should you work on a different puzzle? You look for the corners. Then you start building the outside — the scaffold I talked about earlier: the premise, the characters, the ending. Inevitably, while digging through the pile looking for flat surfaces, you recognize certain colorful pieces from the middle, and you may even assemble small, free-floating chunks not yet attached to anything else, like my unattributed dialogue. And slowly, working back and forth, sifting through the pile, squinting at the picture on the box, you assemble more free-floating chunks, even moving them around occasionally, only at the end finding the little pieces that attach them to each other. And sure enough, the very last bits I write before handing the manuscript off to beta readers are usually small transition sequences and bridging scenes that function only to hold everything together.

Unlike with a puzzle, however, the reference picture on the “box” is fuzzy, like a cheap Chinese bootleg. It’s an inexact construct based on the scaffold — more of a hope than a plan. And in that sense, writing is also art restoration. You might have an idea of what the whole thing is supposed to look like — based on a copy in a different medium, for example — but that doesn’t tell you what color this particular mosaic tile was, or was supposed to be. And sometimes, after doing research and getting stuck for days, you figure that bit out… and realize what you did over on the other side last week was probably wrong and needs to change.

In other words, fiction is a malleable rather than a fixed puzzle, a painting where the canvas is stretched in time rather than in space. The feel I now have for space-less composition, after iterating so many times, is difficult to translate. There’s less groping, for sure. I can tell you, what’s good in the first few episodes of THE MINUS FACTION is so more by educated guesswork — and luck — than concentrated skill. When you have something physical in front of you, like a canvas or a pile of puzzle pieces, it’s easy to improvise a process. Less so when the work exists without static reference.

I think readers (and especially moviegoers) expect creators have it in their power to just pull awesome from the void, and that therefore if the book or movie wasn’t awesome, it must be because the creators weren’t aiming at “the right thing.” Or they just suck.

Sometimes that’s true. But a writer, like an archer, can’t just walk the arrow to the target, jam it in the bull’s eye, turn, and say “There!” The best we can do is faithfully follow our process, and once we let go, hope the arrow hits the mark. Many great works of art were so more by accident (or random trial) than by aim. Practice helps, of course, as does some amount of raw ability, but the end result is never fully ours. Even great directors produce box office duds.

This is why my feel for how I write is so deeply satisfying. I would tell you what I’m producing now — roughly since the middle of Episode Four of THE MINUS FACTION — is as good as anything else out there. That’s not to say everyone will like it. Quite the opposite, in fact. The more I refine my work, the less generic it will be, and so the more it will appeal to some and the less to others, meaning I expect criticism to go up rather than down.

And that’s a good thing. I’d rather readers have strong feelings than no feelings at all. But more importantly, without that deep sense of how I do it, versus Ms. Bignamewriter, I can’t develop the complementary sense of who will enjoy it, and so I end up chasing after everyone, which is a failing strategy. Plus, as I’m discovering now, confidence in your craft frees you from (most of) the sting of criticism. It’s only when you’re unsure of what you’ve made — or more correctly, of how you’ve made it — that you fret about whether it should have been different.

So how do YOU do it?

Birthday Sale – My Entire Catalog is 99 Cents (or less)!

It’s my birthday this week, but you all get the gift. I’ve discounted my entire catalog. All of my books are either 99 cents or free.

I’m going to keep this going only until it runs out of steam, so jump while you can!

For those who prefer buying from Amazon, click here for my author page.

Click here for Barnes & Noble.

Click here for the Apple Store.

Click here for Google Play.

ABOUT THE MINUS FACTION

“A unique brand of justice, morality, and heroism.”

“Gripping, immersive, entertaining.”

An enigmatic mastermind assembles four people with exceptional talents and offers them everything they want in exchange for the impossible—but with the promise that not all of them will survive.

THE MINUS FACTION is a cliffhanging near-future serial about extraordinary abilities and how not to use them. Each of the six novella-length episodes tells a complete story while unraveling the relentless global conspiracy threatening to hack the human race.

“Crackles with energy and promise.“ –Daniel Swensen, author of ORISON

“Singular characters, strong voices, believable moral dilemmas, adventure, brutality, beauty, and action.”  -LJ Cohen, author of DERELICT

ABOUT FANTASMAGORIA

“Brief, violent, and unpredictable, yet thrilling to be in the middle of.” – goodreads reviewer

A scoundrel with a secret seeks the key to escaping the end of the world. An exiled gunslinger, waiting to die, is called back for one more job. A radioactive man is sold into service as an assassin by a mysterious cult. As their stories intertwine, all three are caught between rival mobs, an invincible killer, and a plot to upset an uneasy peace between once-warring nations. While far above the planet, a phantasmal apocalypse looms.

Dinosaurs. Robots. Cannibal fairies. A brain in a vat. A giant squid. Nazi Amazons. Super-soldiers. A war dragon. An assassin cult. Unicorns. Wereninjas. Animal-human hybrids. And a kaiju god of destruction. The battle for the fate of the world starts with a betrayal in a cemetery . . . and a stray phallus.

Equal parts mutant crime noir and sci-fantasy adventure, FANTASMAGORIA is my twisting, turning, genre-bending debut.

“The butt-kicking starts right on page one and just keeps on going at a relentless pace until the end.” – amazon reviewer

“You will not say ‘I’ve read 10 books with this same plot’… I guarantee it.” – audible reviewer

Sneak Preview! (Rough Cut of Episode Six: Chapter One)

Maria flinched at the truck’s ear-piercing beeps but remained still, arms crossed, even as the wide vehicle backed toward her without slowing. Her controlled gaze matched both her neat hair and her Chanel suit, pure white with black trim, and nothing about her so much as wavered.

Twelve inches from her face, the truck stopped with a shudder and the rear door rolled back into the ceiling.

Maria scanned the occupants. “Where are Heinrich and Tobias?”

Psyphire cursed in surprise as she hopped down to the loading dock. “Gone. Heinrich is a vegetable. After the Tobias-construct reconnected to the hive, he took his brother’s body and left.”

Maria watched a small group of uniformed men climb into the back to unload the single cargo container inside. “Did it seem suspicious?”

Psyphire thought. “Maybe. A little. Why?”

“The network connection to MODUS was severed nine hours ago. From the other end. It seems the hive mind is no longer honoring our agreement. And now the Wisper is on the loose. Again. Thanks to you. You wanted to be in charge. And you got it. Your ambition, your sense of entitlement, has always surpassed your competence. Just out of curiosity, Veronika, is there any way you could have failed more completely?”

Psyphire pressed her lips together and indulged visions of setting her elder on fire. The woman looked so smug. In her $10,000 Chanel. “We captured one of them.” She motioned to the steel coffin the men were lowering from the back.

“Captured?” Maria let out a laugh. “Open it up,” she ordered. “I want to see him.”

“Here?” Psyphire looked around at the wide-open bay. There were workers everywhere.

Maria waited with arms crossed as the soldiers, mostly local Chinese, turned the heavy contraption with a powered lift and lowered it to the ground.

“You’re good at what you do, Veronika. But you think you’re the best. And you’re not.” But you could be.

“So you have explained, over and over, since I was a teen.”

Maria pointed to the coffin. “You found him idling on an overpass in the middle of rush hour where any of a hundred people in our network easily spotted him. You didn’t capture anyone. Zero. None. This man turned himself in.” Maria turned to the coffin as the last inch-thick screw was removed. “The question is why. I don’t suppose he’s said anything.”

Psyphire, scowling, shook her head.

The men lifted the lid of the coffin and set it aside. Maria looked at the prisoner. Half his body was burned. One arm and both legs were severely atrophied. They had found him in a wheelchair. Barricade had shot it out from under him so he would be trapped and unable to flee. Apparently he couldn’t even walk. Now he was held tight in form-fitting white foam, a new kind of plastic that turned rigid when heated even slightly above room temperature, such as from the warmth of a human body.

But his head was free and was covered in some kind of metal brace, like a helmet of crisscrossing bars. There were electrodes underneath and a clear plastic visor covering his face. He was awake. He looked at her.

He didn’t seem like much. But—amazingly—she recognized him. Maria’s lips pursed. “I know this man.” She scowled. Where was it?

Psyphire looked confused. “You’re joking.”

Maria touched the prisoner’s skin. Her powers had all but faded. She couldn’t sense people like she used to, but sometimes—

Malaysia. She nodded. The soldier from Malaysia. He had touched her. On a plane. When they brought Adevyi. “Once upon a time, this man brought us Deadbolt,” she explained matter-of-factly. “And just like God, what he giveth he also taketh away.”

The prisoner didn’t respond.

“I don’t suppose you want to tell me why you turned yourself in?”

The man in the foam-lined coffin just looked at her.

“You should know, there’s a man downstairs. An Armenian, who’s family has been in a very particular business for several hundred years, at least back to Suleiman the Magnificent. Recently he was working for the Syrians. That’s where the CIA got him. He’s on loan to us. He’s supposedly a master with a dentist’s drill. Not someone you want asking you questions.”

Still nothing.

Maria scowled. She nodded to the waiting soldiers, who lifted the lid back onto the coffin and screwed it in place. She watched them haul it away, down to the detention level.

“What’s on his head?”

Psyphire stiffened again. It wasn’t a polite question. It sounded more like an accusation. “Something from Research. We found out the hard way that giving everyone around him a quantum scrambler creates too many points of failure.”

“Jesus, that should have been obvious from the beginning, Veronika. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. You were overconfident. You got Megan killed, lost our most prized asset, and started a war with the Vorgýrim Supremacy, all at the same time.”

Psyphire swallowed hard.

Bitch.

Maria pictured the man’s helmet in her head. “It keeps him from traveling.”

The firestarter said nothing.

Maria turned. She ignored Psyphire’s red, fuming face. “Well?”

“Da. It monitors his brain waves. If they start to drift toward a meditative state, the device directly stimulates every pain-carrying nerve in his spinal cord. He experiences, literally, the maximum amount of pain possible. I wouldn’t have brought him here without securing him first.” Not five minutes and already she was a teenager again, getting defensive.

“You’re sure it works? Did you even bother to test it?”

“Why do you think he just lies there? Because he’s a nice man?”

Maria looked at the bruises on Psyphire’s face, the ones she was trying to cover with makeup. “Hit you hard, did he? Good. Maybe you’ll learn something.”

Psyphire walked toward the entrance to the dam complex at the back of the long hangar. Thick colored lines painted on the floor directed the workers: green for food and medicine, blue for arms and ammunition, yellow-lined thruways, and red zones to avoid at all costs.

“Where’s Artemis?”

Psyphire turned but didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.

“And Scarab?”

Psyphire didn’t have to answer that either.

Maria pressed her lips together. Deadbolt. Brickbat. Malady. Now Barricade. Special Assets, everything she built, was falling apart. Almost as if someone had planned—

There was a ruckus across the open courtyard, at the front gate—some shouting and the growing rumble of a motorcade.

Maria looked at Psyphire. “Make sure the prisoner is secured in the holding facility.” Then she walked to a set of metal stairs in a high wall and ascended to the deck overlooking the courtyard from the upper level. As she emerged from the heavy door, painted yellow, she glanced at the guard tower overhead. The 70mm guns were silent, and that could mean only one thing. The Chairman had arrived for his inspection.

Maria knew it was coming, although it was officially unscheduled. It was supposed to be a surprise. And in a way it was. She thought he would travel with a small retinue, like a business man, to avoid suspicion. But as she watched the front gate slide open and a parade of military vehicles enter the courtyard, her stomach started to sink.

Fast.

Especially since Thierry, the facility’s chief technician, was already waiting on the upper deck. What did he know?

“What is this?” she asked. But she knew exactly what it was. It was an army. Chinese, judging by the uniforms. And not just men, but weapons and ammunition and provisions stacked in boxes in the back of trucks. And she knew exactly what it meant. She forced herself not to look at the man next to her.

She swallowed hard. So it had come to this. A fucking coup.

Maria looked at her watch. Unless she found a way out, she had maybe an hour to live.

Tops.

She was about to turn for the double doors at the back of the deck when a heavy truck pulled through the main gate hauling a flatbed trailer. On the back, a large, oblong machine strobed in irregular pulsing circles. A series of eight vertical rings—giant electromagnets, it seemed—were keeping something contained inside a heavy central chamber. The entire contraption had been spray-painted with a black fiberglass anti-corrosive, and it gave the appearance of a giant dragon, coiled and restrained against its will.

Maria’s mind immediately flashed back to her computer screen and a seemingly innocuous email she had received a couple weeks earlier—one of hundreds she had gotten that day and the fifth that week from a colleague in Research. It was a request. Not all that unusual for the scientists in the organization. They had wanted something. For testing.

As the truck rumbled across the tarmac below and pulled into the wide hangar to her left, Maria could just make out the warning painted in white on the side.

 

DANGER

300 MEGAVOLTS

 

They had requested a dead body. One of her team. Technically they didn’t need her permission, but given the subject, they did her the honor of asking. And she gave them Deadbolt’s body.

And now Anders was using it to make his big move. How had she missed it? Had her powers faded completely?

No time for that now. No time for anything but getting out alive.

Start with her advantages. What were they? She had hired most of the senior on-site staff. She knew who would lean when pushed. And who would jump ship.

She turned to Thierry. “See to it they get what they need. I’ll be in the control room preparing for the inspection.” She started walking.

“You’re leaving?”

Maria stopped and turned. “Are you saying you’re not competent to handle”—she waved to the chaos below as the private army settled into the courtyard—“all this?”

Thierry was French Algerian, under 30, a gifted network engineer, a competent manager, and a snake.

He didn’t answer. He just looked at her.

Maria kept walking. When she was through the doors and around the corner, she picked up the pace and pulled out her phone. She dialed the control room—one technician in particular.

A young Chinese woman with a round face filled the screen.

“Open a secure channel, please.”

There was a pause.

“Is that a problem?”

“No, ma’am. Yes, ma’am. I mean, we’ve just been ordered to go on security lock down.” The young woman pointed off screen.

Maria looked at the technician’s name tag and pretended like she didn’t know exactly who she was talking to. “Ming, is it?”

“Yes, ma’am. We met at—”

“Who is the director of this facility?”

“You are, ma’am.”

“Don’t you think I know we’re on secure lock down?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“So if I’m asking for a secure channel, it must be important, mustn’t it?”

The technician didn’t know what to say.

Maria leaned closer to the screen. She whispered. “Open the fucking channel or I will personally feed you to the creature in Storage Bay 6.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Maria tapped her phone screen, disconnecting the intercom and connecting her phone to the secure port that appeared in her com settings. As she stepped into the central corridor, she routed the connection through her personal server, which would buy her a little more time. Even after her order to open the line was countermanded, they would have to do a little digging to find her. Then she hit the contact entry for

 

Martin, Justin

Asset Code: PREACHER

 

Maria looked at the clock on the wall as she flagged a four-wheeled electric people mover. The countdown—the final countdown—was clicking to its conclusion. What was Anders planning? It took all her control not to run.

She shooed the driver and sole passenger out of the mover with a scowl as the phone rang twice. Then she drove down the long, seemingly unending hall as fast as the vehicle would go.

A voice answered. “I thought you might call.”

Justin. Maria sighed. “What’s going on there? Are you okay?”

“My good friend Amir is here.” Justin was sarcastic. “In my office. It seems I’ve been locked out of the prison.”

Amir Rizage. Asset Code: KILOBITE. That was smart. Justin’s voice wouldn’t work on him. Maria could tell the young man was worried. He realized what was happening. “Can you get out of there?”

There was a pause. “I don’t know.”

He couldn’t say with Kilobite close by.

“All I know is, the good people of Mountain Hide have a lot of faith in God. Let’s hope it’s enough.”

He was counting on the townsfolk. He must have prepared a way out. At least he had an exit plan. She had taught him that much.

Maria looked at the clock on her phone and turned a corner as a pair of passing technicians whispered and looked at her. “Take care of yourself.” She crushed the thought that she might never see him again.

“What about you?” he asked.

“Don’t worry about me. I have a few friends left.”

“Come on now. You can’t fake that tone with me. I’m the master of voices, remember?”

When Justin spoke again, Maria’s heart fluttered.

“Mom.” He was calm. Plaintive. “Be careful.”

“I’ll see you soon.” Maria hung up.

She looked at the phone. The secure port was still open. Probably not for long.

“WAIT!” Maria brought the mover to a halt and ran for the closing elevator. One woman inside held the door open for her.

“Out.” Maria ordered.

The woman seemed hurt that her kindness had been repaid so, but she complied, and Maria hit the button for the Rec level. She brought up her contact list and tapped another entry.

 

MODUS

Encrypted Relay Node

 

A pull-down menu appeared and offered her a choice of 73 alphanumeric relays. Maria scrolled to the very end and picked ‘Other.’ A box expanded and filled her screen. There was a blinking cursor but no prompt. MODUS had several hidden nodes. To access them, you had first to know they existed, and second, to type the appropriate code. One mistake and your device would be locked out permanently.

Maria hoped Modus hadn’t closed the special port she’d requested when they made their arrangement. She typed the password and, after a brief pause, a second text prompt appeared on her screen—a blinking cursor in front of the greater than sign: a command line. She was in. If the port had been disabled, her phone would have given her an error message. The elevator opened and Maria did her best to type as she walked.

 

I KNOW YOU CAN SEE THIS

FUCKING ANSWER

 

A response appeared after a brief pause. That meant the hive mind had had a big discussion with itself whether or not she deserved to be acknowledged.

 

MARIA. MODUS IS PLEASED TO SEE YOU ARE

STILL ALIVE.

 

NO THANKS TO YOU. WE HAD AN

AGREEMENT.

 

THE FUGITIVE’S ESCAPE IN NEW YORK ALTERED

THE PROBABILITY FUNCTION IN UNEXPECTED

WAYS.

 

IS THAT YOUR WAY OF SAYING

YOU GOT CAUGHT WITH YOUR

PANTS DOWN LIKE THE REST OF

US?

 

There was another pause.

 

THE WISPER CONFOUNDED US ALL. WE CURRENTLY

ESTIMATE THERE IS LESS THAN A 12% PROBABILITY

THAT VERONIKA AND HER TEAM WILL SURVIVE.

 

AND YOU DIDN’T THINK TO WARN

ME??? WE HAD A DEAL. NOT WITH

THE ORGANIZATION. WITH ME.

 

AND WE HONORED IT.

 

YOU WILL RECALL OUR DEAL WAS CONTINGENT

ON 17 EXPLICIT EXCEPTIONS, SECOND OF WHICH

WAS THAT MODUS ITSELF WOULD NOT BE IN

MORTAL DANGER.

WHEN

THE PRISONERS ESCAPED, THE PROBABILITY

FUNCTION ALTERED AND IT BECAME LIKELY

THAT FACTIONS WITHIN YOUR ORGANIZATION

WOULD USE THE FAILURE AS A WEDGE TO

GAIN CONTROL. AS THEY HAD BEFORE.

 

FOR SUCH A COUP TO SUCCEED, OPPOSITION

MUST BE ELIMINATED. OUR ALLIANCE WITH

YOU THUS PUT MODUS IN DANGER AND THE

AGREEMENT WAS IMMEDIATELY ABROGATED.

ALL TIES TO YOUR ORGANIZATION HAVE BEEN

SEVERED.

 

THEN WHY ARE YOU TALKING TO

ME?

 

THIS LINE IS SECURE. AND

 

There was nothing.

 

AND????

 

SENTIMENT. PURE HUMAN SENTIMENT. MUCH

OF MODUS WAS UNEXPECTEDLY PLEASED TO

HEAR FROM YOU.

 

They thought she was already dead.

 

I NEED A WAY OUT OF HERE.

 

ALPHA SITE WAS BUILT TO BE IMPREGNABLE

TO ALL KNOWN FORMS OF INTRUSION AND

WARFARE, INCLUDING NUCLEAR ATTACK.

 

Maria had worked with the hive mind for many years, and although its personality had often shifted slightly, presumably as component-members died or new ones were brought on, one thing was always constant.

 

ARE YOU SAYING MODUS ISN’T CLEVER

ENOUGH TO DISCERN A DESIGN FLAW?

 

Another pause.

 

THERE ARE FOUR EXITS. THE FIRST IS

THROUGH THE FRONT DOOR.

 

ANDERS HAS AN ARMY OUT FRONT.

 

WE ARE AWARE. THE SECOND IS THROUGH THE

DAM SLUICEWAYS. THE PRESSURE WOULD CRUSH

YOUR BODY, AND EVEN IF YOU SURVIVED, YOU

WOULD HIT THE RIVER AT 16 m/sec AND DROWN

ON IMPACT.

 

FINE. SO NOT THAT.

 

ONE MOMENT

 

Maria stopped walking. MODUS might have discerned a threat. She stood behind a corner and fretted through four seconds of silence.

 

YOUR ORGANIZATION IS ATTEMPTING TO CLOSE

THIS LINE. MODUS IS KEEPING IT OPEN.

TO CONTINUE:

THERE IS A VERTICAL MAINTENANCE DUCT IN

THE ROOF OF THE PARTICLE GENERATOR,

BUT IT EXITS DIRECTLY ABOVE, ON THE

PLATFORM AT THE END OF THE CONCRETE

PIER. ABOVE THE PARTICLE GENERATOR.

IN THE LAKE.

 

I KNOW IT

 

THE ROOF OF THE DAM IS BARREN. THERE IS NO

COVER. YOU WOULD BE TRAPPED BETWEEN THE

LAKE AND THE SPILLWAY.

 

WHY COULDN’T YOU JUST GO RIGHT

TO THE FOURTH???

 

BECAUSE MODUS WILL LET YOU CHOOSE

YOUR OWN DESTINY. THE FINAL EXIT IS

FROM THE ARMORY.

 

Shit. Of course. The Armory was built to house all the strange and unusual weapons the organization manufactured or collected, many of which were unsafe or simply unstable. The whole room was a thick was a metal cube on gear-tracks. It could be ejected into the river and carried downstream with the push of a button.

But the Armory was back the other way.

 

CAN YOU SEVER THE CONNECTION TO

THE CONTROL ROOM? PUT IT ON

LOCAL CONTROL?

 

IT IS ALREADY DONE. MODUS CAN DO NO

MORE. YOU WILL NOT HEAR FROM US AGAIN.

 

The text box disappeared, along with the secure connection.

She was on her own.

“Nice talking to you, too.” Maria looked up to a squad of three guard approaching from the end of the hall. They pointed as she ducked into the stairwell. The last thing she saw before she scampered down the metal staircase was the men drawing their sidearms, which answered the biggest question on her mind: whether or not the kill order had already been given.

Except for a handful of people, Maria couldn’t be sure who would remain loyal to her. But then, neither could the other side. They would move as quickly as possible, but they would be cautious. And methodical. The lack of exist meant it was better for them to proceed slowly, room-by-room, lest she slip through their net. That gave her a little time. And Maria had the home field advantage. She had spent the last several years chairing the planning committee that oversaw the design and construction of Alpha Site. More than that, she had spent the last several months in a direct management role, gradually becoming familiar with every detail of the facility, every unexpected difficulty, every compromise solution. And a construction project of this scale had plenty of those.

She knew, for example, that there had been a minor explosion in the early stages of construction that damaged one of the interior retaining walls, and that in the interests of staying on schedule, since the damage was structurally negligible, one corner of it—that facing a men’s room on the Rec level—was covered by nothing but drywall.

Maria exited the stairwell and pulled the fire alarm. It wouldn’t be global. The entire compound had been built in sealable sections to prevent global catastrophe. It also wouldn’t last long since every system was connected to the control room, who could shut it down. And pulling it gave her exact location away.

But in the half-minute or so it was active, it did it’s job. Workers cleared the hall and headed for the exits, which would slow her pursuers down. Maria moved from a storage closet into the men’s room, now vacant. She entered the last stall, took off her heels, and used the point of her shoes to hack through the dry wall at the back. She was in the crawlspaces—largely void of cameras—before the guards could complete their room-by-room sweep of the gym, locker rooms, and spacious pool and court facilities.

Maria looked up at the narrow, dim space above her. Tubes and piping ran in every direction. And it was a loooong climb. The Armory was in Section Two, Level 12, roughly a third of the way back toward the front. There was a security camera at a T-junction several floors up, and Maria made sure she was seen ripping it from the wall. That, plus MODUS’s meddling with the Armory subsystems—assuming Thierry and his team were smart enough to check for intrusions once they realized she had opened the port—would establish that as her presumed exit point. With any luck, that would keep her adversaries focused on Section Two as she made the long trek along the particle array to the as-yet inoperable generator deep under the lake.

Somewhere, deep under all that water, was the quantum particle generator—the key to the Founders’ plan. In a matter of days, after numerous tests, the massive arms would finally begin spinning for good. But now they were silent as Maria worked her way between the spherical subterranean chamber and the facility’s heavy outer wall, built to withstand an attack from both above and below—even from everyone’s favorite tunneling bloodsuckers.

Maria opened the hatch and looked up the vertical shaft. It went on further than she could see, straight up through the lake to a platform at the surface.

She sighed.

She climbed in and sealed the hatch behind her, and as she ascended the ladder, hand over hand, she wondered again why this tube had even been built. It had been added late, ostensibly to stabilize the generator room—a shielded, vacuum-filled spherical chamber—in case of seismic activity. But the tube was hollow. And one of the junior architects had mentioned that in any earthquake large enough to shake the complex, such a hollow tube wouldn’t offer much additional stability.

She stopped to tear the skirt of her suit. After several tugs, it split along the black hem, making it easier for her to move her legs. Then she resumed the long climb. She chipped a nail, then two. Not that it mattered. It just highlighted for her how much easier everything would be if she weren’t burdened with such ridiculous, impractical clothing.

After a small eternity, a nearly-sprained back, and calloused hands that would soon sprout blisters, Maria opened the hatch at the top, barely an inch, and peered out. There was nothing—just the drab concrete “pier” a few feet above the water that connected the platform at the top of the tube with the wall of the dam ahead. She could hear the roar of the water in the distance.

Maria climbed out. The sun was shining. It was hot, but not oppressively so. All in all, a beautiful day.

It wasn’t until she turned and dropped the hatch that she saw Anders standing behind her.

She jumped and the hatch fell shut with a clang.

He was alone. But he was . . .

A monster. Scarred. Hairless. And wearing some kind of dark maroon bodysuit.

Maria’s head dropped. She put a hand to her face. Dammit.

“The Armory would have been a better choice,” he explained in a low voice. “But then, you always were very clever.”

Apparently not enough, she thought. “You look different.” The bodysuit left only his head exposed and was composed of multiple layers of interlocking hexagons. Bulletproof, she figured. And only God knew what else.

But the strangest part was his skin. It was red, mottled, and swollen with scar tissue, as if he’d recently taken a bath in acid.

Maybe he had.

“Thank you. I feel different.”

Whatever it was, it had changed his voice as well.

“I no longer have any hair. Or fingerprints. And I no longer feel any pain.”

“Anders—” she began.

“Anders Benet is dead. I killed him. Just as I have killed so many others.” He stepped forward. “You may call me The Red King.”

Maria scowled. The Red King? Had he gone insane? She almost couldn’t believe it. Asset codes and funny names were what they gave the foot soldiers to hide their identities and make them feel special. It was kindergarten stuff. Juvenile.

“Is that what you’ll ask the Founders to call you during their next wake cycle?”

“I have unplugged the Founders.”

Maria’s stumbled back again and fell to her ass. She lost breath. Her skin tingled. She tried to repeat the word “unplugged” but barely the first syllable made it from her lips.

A dozen thoughts raced through her mind.

The man once called Anders Benet simply waited for it to sink in.

Maria forced herself to breathe. She inhaled deeply and let it out slow. She made fists on the concrete. At once, everything she had believed about the world was a confusion, like turning your head to realize the person you thought was next to you the whole time, the one you’d been talking to for twenty minutes, wasn’t there. Like the instant of waking from a too-real dream.

Only it was her entire life.

The Founders had established their organization on a series of principles that dictated no one faction could gain the upper hand. It constrained all actors to work in concert toward a common goal. A brilliant organizational design, a masterpiece of human engineering.

When Anders absorbed Special Assets into Control, the other department heads should have objected. It was a violation of the charter and a single objection would have been sufficient. Any one of them could have stopped it. A secret ballot could have been called. Instead the fools stayed silent. Each of them. Not willing to risk anything to defend her. Waiting to make their own play for power. Worried that calling for a vote would summon a reprisal.

Worried more about themselves than the vision.

The central committee was supposed to be staffed with true believers. The Founders took rigorous steps to see that it was so.  But in the end, she realized in a gasping epiphany, her organization was made of exactly the same thing as every other: humans. Those who rose through its ranks to fill the seats on the council were not necessarily those most competent, but those minimally competent who also could play the game. Be popular. Forge alliances. Speak in euphemisms. Swallow their pride. Hide their ambition. And in that way, the council was no different than any corporate board on the planet.

However effective it was in theory, in simulation after simulation, the Founders’ great formula—the plan to save mankind—turned out to be a fraud. And the reason was ridiculously simple. Almost obvious, in hindsight. It could never predict its own demise. Logically, it couldn’t speak to itself. Maybe in the hands of an alien race, it could yet implemented. But in the hands of the very hunter-gatherer species it was designed to supplant, it could never engineer a different future.

A social ape raises social climbers to the top and then watches from the shadows as they dance round the fire, leaving the rest of us cold.

Maybe we were beyond saving.

Or maybe we just weren’t clever enough yet to figure it out.

Maria gripped her fists in frustration. Everything. Everything she worked for her entire life, the sacrifices, the lies, the killing . . . It was all for nothing.

She couldn’t face him. She wouldn’t let him see her face. “You never believed in any of it, did you? The vision. The formula. The plan to save us. From ourselves. To save everything. The species. The planet.”

“Oh, don’t worry. Nothing has changed. It will happen. I will see to it. I will make sure everything we have dreamed will come to pass. Just as we planned. And you will be a hero, Maria. I will see to that as well. People need heroes. They need to know such things exist. For if there are heroes in the world, then there is hope. And it is only when all hope is gone that people will stand up for themselves. If there are heroes, then they’re yet free. They can go back to doing”—he shrugged—“whatever it is they waste their lives on. They don’t have to concern themselves with our messy, morally ambiguous world. They don’t have to worry about making things better. For themselves. For their children. Because there are heroes. Out there. Fighting the good fight for them.

“And that’s what I’ll make you. We’re going to build a statue garden. Just there.” He pointed to the distant shore, past an impossible run along the length of the massive dam. “You’ll live forever in eight meters of marble. People will come and wander around and see your face and read a little plaque that says you are the mother of this place. Because you are. More than anyone, you brought it to bear.

“Just as you did with Special Assets. Back when our organization had more dreams than promise. You showed us the way. Recruit extraordinary people, like yourself. Do more with less. Leave no trace.

“There were mistakes, to be sure. If not for Havek’s havok, there would have been no need for the Founders to bring me aboard, and it would be you standing here.” He pointed to his feet resting on the strange platform in the water. “But I recognize that progress doesn’t come without risks. And you were never afraid to take risks.”

“It sounds like you’re practicing my eulogy.” Maria wondered what he was waiting for. Why he was stalling? Why not just kill her and be done with it?

And then she saw.

A lone figure approached along the barren concrete of the dam, then turned to follow the pier, dressed in unmistakable blue.

Psyphire.

The women met each other’s gaze. Maria’s graying hair had come free in the climb, and the gentle breeze blew it in front of her face.

They both knew what was coming. Both flinched ever-so-slightly all the same. A tiny twitch behind the eyes.

The Red King, standing in his strange bodysuit, simply waited.

Maria knew Psyphire all too well. She looked down. “Jesus, Veronika, don’t let him win.”

The firestarter stiffened. Maria was always keeping her in check. Always the disappointed parent. “Who says he’ll win?”

Maria shook her head. Arrogant girl. “You have a choice. You always had a choice.”

“What choice?” Psyphire scoffed in her Russian accent. “His suit is impenetrable.” She turned her eyes to the scarred man in the dark red suit. “And it does something. If he touches you. I saw it. It sucks the life right out of people. The woman Ming just . . . disappeared.”

Maria turned to look at the suit. Then she turned to the concrete beneath her. If Psyphire didn’t kill her, Anders would kill them both.

She looked around. She had played right into his hands. And on such a beautiful day.

The Red King saw her gaze. “Nothing but concrete and water up here.” He raised open palms.

Maria wiped her hands together. Small pebbles and bits of dirt fell. Up there, on the top of the dam, Psyphire’s power was just about useless. In fact, the only thing flammable for a thousand yards in any direction . . . was Maria herself. Her Chanel suit. The product in her hair. Her makeup. Maria knew Psyphire could sense flammability the way a thirsty animal could sense distant water in the desert. It pulled at her.

Maria looked at the man once called Anders Benet. No emotion. She looked to Veronika. “I was wondering why we built this pier.” She stood. She felt the cool dam under her stocking-covered feet. “The designs suggested it was to stabilize the particle chamber in case of seismic activity. But the architects mentioned it would never do much. I knew there had to be a reason. But of all the things to worry about—the countdown, the schedule, labor shortages, your shenanigans on the council . . . I never gave it much thought. Not that it would have mattered if I did. I never would have guessed the truth.” She looked The Red King in the eye again. “This where the throne will go. Isn’t it?”

Psyphire turned to the man, who revealed nothing.

The high dam was vaguely hockey stick-shaped. The first section ran out from shore at a 30-degree angle with the river. Then it turned and cut perpendicular across the flow, creating the primary obstruction and so the lake. Sitting on the circular platform at the end of the pier, Anders would be visible to the crowd on three sides.

Both women knew it was no accident the platform sat directly above the particle chamber, the source of his power. From there—once the tube was converted to its true purpose, an elevator—the man could rise up through the water, like Moses parting the Red Sea, to greet the throngs gathered to worship at his feet, to beg for favors and trinkets.

The Red King raised his arms and turned. “Isn’t it beautiful? You did such a wonderful job. Larger than all the great pyramids combined. Such a wonder.”

Maria shook her head. He’d planned this. All along. His coup. And the evidence had been right under her nose the whole time. They never should have built it, this impregnable monster.

For now there was no one to stop him.

No one.

“They will come from all over. They will line up in great throngs. There will be banners.” He pointed. “All along causeway. And a red carpet. And they will line up for the chance to walk, timidly, across the pier and kneel. Before their king. Everyone. Everywhere.”

Maria looked at Psyphire.

Psyphire looked back.

Maria could see the struggle. And the faintest hint of shame.

So. She had fucked him. Jesus, Veronika, Maria cursed to herself. You think the honeypot routine works on a man like him? Reward him with sex and he’d fall at your feet? You were supposed to be better. My best student. It was supposed to be you and I.

It was no mistake, of course, that it was the two of them up there on the dam. Two women. Anders had to prove himself dominant. He had to be the alpha fucking male.

“Good luck, Veronika,” Maria said softly.

Psyphire’s eyes welled. There was no going back now.

Was there?

She shut her eyes.

And for the first time in her life, Veronika Molotov didn’t want to see the flame she started.

She covered her ears. She didn’t want to hear the screams. The screams of her little sister. Trapped in that burning bed. So long ago.

Moments passed.

The Red King walked over and nudged Maria’s still burning body with his dark boot. He inhaled deeply, drawing the scent of her charred flesh through his scarred nose, like a chemical burn. And when he was certain she was gone, he pushed her body over the side of the pier, and it sank into the lake.

Psyphire turned and walked to the dam. Such a splendid view of the river winding through the valley below. It was empty. Everything as far as she could see. Out of fear of a reactor meltdown that never happened.

The Red King walked up behind her. “Do you know why her powers failed her?”

Psyphire didn’t answer. Her hands were wrapped around her chest. Even from this height, she could feel the power of the water erupting from the dam far below. She could feel the mist.

The Red King stood next to her and stared over the edge. “She could sense so much. She found you. And your colleagues. She was like a mother to you, I know. So empathic. Sensing not only your abilities, but your anxieties and how to overcome them. Giving you strength.”

He turned to face the firestarter. Psyphire was grim. She wanted to kill him. She would kill him.

One day.

“I was poisoning her. Slowly. It was in her makeup, you see.”

Psyphire reached up and touched her own made-up face.

“Just a little bit. Every time. Absorbed through the skin. As she got older, she used more, and the effect quickened. As her powers faded, her anxieties grew. As her anxieties grew, she relied more on her appearance. And on and on. It happens to all women, I suppose.

“I couldn’t risk her sensing my true intentions. Every interaction with Maria pushed me to the limits of my restraint. She was twice the adversary you are.” He stepped closer to the woman in blue. “I wanted you to know,” he whispered, “because I want you to understand how completely she was beaten. How she never saw it coming. How very patient I am. And that it should be a comfort knowing that you didn’t have a choice.

“You’re a survivor, Veronika. And now you exist for one reason and one reason only: because you just murdered the closest thing to a mother you ever had. So I yet have hopes you can become something more than the failure you are.”

The Red King turned his eyes over the edge of the dam. Then he walked toward the front.

Psyphire kept her eyes on the white water. The din was louder there, standing just at the edge. “Someone should tell Justin,” she said.

The emperor of the world stopped. “Preacher died ten minutes ago.”

Psyphire didn’t look. “Who was it?”

“Amir.”

The firestarter nodded. That was smart. Preacher’s voice wouldn’t work on Kilobite.

“Scarab has Artemis. I’m giving him to the Vorgýrim. As a peace offering. To offset your failure and buy us some time until the machine goes live.”

Psyphire didn’t move. There was hardly anyone left. He’d given her enough rope to destroy her own team.

“I’m going to meet our esteemed prisoner. And let him know he has friends on the way. You will remain on the upper levels, far from me. See that our army is installed.”

But Psyphire didn’t acknowledge.

She simply stared at the churning river below.

 

top image: “Fortress Neo Tokyo V” by Markus Vogt