Two-Chapter Sneak Preview of "The Minus Faction" Episode Two

THE MINUS FACTIONEpisode Two"Crossfire"

 

 

 

T Minus: 038 Days 15 Hours 18 Minutes 51 Seconds

 

 

The Disemboweler stroked the child's head and smiled from under his severed mask. He had cut it in an arc under the cheeks to reveal his mouth and the tip of his nose. It obscured everything else but his eyes, which were black and soulless. Like a shark's.

The mask was reptilian—once a crocodile or snake—but its painted green scales were dirty and scuffed at the ridges. Like its owner, it was disfigured beyond recognition. It was a horror strapped to the man's head by a cracked and frayed leather belt.

"There, there," he told the little girl.

Her white eyes shone up at him. Her skin was jet black. She clutched a striped short-haired cat.

"See? No need to be scared." The big man squatted next to the pigtailed child and patted her head. He held her arm with one hand and took the cat with the other. He lifted it and the two beasts stared at each other. "What's his name?"

The girl didn't answer. She was terrified, as were all the residents of Figtree Cove. They stared in silence from under the Bagassa trees or fanned themselves under the equatorial Sun. Only the insects chattered. Boraro the Disemboweler had earned his epithet thrice-over—at least—and no one dared challenge him, not even to spare an innocent.

Boraro, still squatting, stroked the cat and addressed the dozen or so members of his audience. "We are looking for Xana Jace."

Everyone knew "we" meant Mama Enecio, almost certainly watching from behind the tinted glass of the Mercedes idling on the dirt road. Mama was a big woman and kept to air conditioning. Three more of her men stood around the car. They held machetes and stakes.

No one spoke.

Boraro smiled again at the child. His dark eyes danced under the mask as he stroked her best friend. "Do you know Xana?"

The child nodded.

"Do you know where she is?"

The girl shook her head. She stared at her purring pet and looked as though she were about to cry.

Boraro scowled. He disliked children. They were loud and unreasonable. Only good for one thing. And it wasn't time for that.

Yet.

He waved his hand for her to leave and she ran across the dirt and grass to her mother, who waited in front their dilapidated shack. Of the seven so-called houses that rimmed the cove, two were leaning so heavily as to be uninhabitable. The water behind them filled a deep depression in the ground, runoff gathered from a tributary of the Demerara River. Figtree Cove was nearly dry for three months of the year, a muddy depression that fed flies and mosquitoes. The rest of the time it served as bath, fishing hole, and irrigation well for the tiny community.

Boraro stood tall in the sun still holding the lazy feline. The man's dry, scaly brown skin was covered in fine black hairs. He wore a plain t-shirt and work pants. His long legs ended in mud-caked boots. His heavy arms sprouted from his shoulders and bulged like twisted-steel cables. His hands made fists like club heads.

"I have a message. I want you to give it to the freak Xana." He rubbed his fingers back and forth over the cat's ears. The animal closed its eyes. "Tell her I will face her tomorrow under the noon sun. One on one. In the junkyard by the Dutch market. Tell her, if she does not come . . ." He swept his hand across the scene. "We will burn every one of these houses to the ground."

The crowd stayed silent.

"Tell her she cannot run. Tell her." The Disemboweler grabbed the cat's head and twisted. The animal squealed and went silent. The crowd gasped. The little girl hid her face in her mother's faded dress. The woman put a hand on her daughter but said nothing.

Boraro ripped the cat's skull from its body. Strips of torn skin stretched like taffy. He tipped the head over his open mouth as if drinking from a coconut. He swallowed blood. A dribble ran down his throat. He tossed the head to the dust and yanked the cat's fur to reveal it's muscle-covered ribcage. Boraro cracked it with bulging arms and pulled out the animal's heart. It looked like a juicy plum in his fat fingers. He tossed the carcass to the ground and took a bite from the organ. Red liquid squirted and drained over his fingers like juice. Many in the crowd turned away.

The masked man chewed. His reptilian cowl moved up and down with each clench of his jaw. Then he motioned his men forward. They walked toward the closest shack and everyone saw. Those weren't stakes in their hands. They were torches.

"No!" A skinny, shirtless man stepped forward.

One of Mama Enecio's men knocked him down and kicked him as another lit a gasoline-soaked torch with his Zippo and tossed it into the closest shack.

The skinny man put his face in the dirt and covered his head to hide the sobs. Everyone else watched as flames rose and surrounded the door frame.

Boraro swallowed the last of the heart and wiped his hands back and forth on his pants. He watched the flames grow. Dry, sun-baked wood crackled and snapped. In moments, the shack was an inferno.

"Noon," the Disemboweler repeated. "Or I will come back hungry." He waved to the little girl. Then he turned with the others, walked to the car, and drove away.

T Minus: 038 Days 09 Hours 57 Minutes 12 Seconds

 

 

Xana Jace stood seven feet four inches tall and avoided everyone she could. To most of the people who knew her, she was a nuisance. To everyone else, a monster. Certainly she looked the part, with a heavy brow, a stout jaw, and a thundering gait.

But Xana wasn't a monster. She was merely host to one. It had first appeared as a tiny bulge from a gland in her head, half the size of a pea. It secreted something, like a whisper to her cells telling them to grow and grow.

And grow.

Apparently it wasn't enough for the monster to choke her heart with a mass of muscle and send her to an early grave. Apparently it had to deform her first, to turn her into her own reflection in a bulging mirror.

Xana looked down at her hands, like a man's. Bigger. They were dirty,  calloused, and cut. She hadn't had a manicure in seven years.

But who was counting?

She wiped them on her military surplus t-shirt and looked across the vacant lot. A three-meter-wide pile of refuse flaunted the "No Dumping" sign staked to the ground. The South American sun burrowed into everything from above. Across the street, a large crowd loitered in front of the old Royal House, now a stale collection of legal offices. It was a protest, or what passed for one in Guyana. With too many men and not enough work, there were always people angry about something. Hand-lettered signs rested on the ground or against palm trees while their owners smoked and sat and waited for an audience.

Xana knew how it went. As soon as someone important-looking appeared, the men would jump to their feet and hoot and holler, as if called to cue by an invisible director. Even the uniformed policeman, sitting on a broken concrete block, would join the show. He'd drop his cigarette and jostle with loose arms, pretending to hold the crowd at bay. It was an act. Usually.

But then Xana's cousin Weke had been killed in a mob when she was seventeen and he three years younger. She couldn't even remember what it was about. Weke had been beaten and trampled. Xana had seen the body after.

She bit her full lower lip and watched from the cover of a banyan tree. She didn't like crowds. She was not particularly well-muscled, but her size coupled with her gender were a threat to angry young men, especially those emboldened by each other's presence. And there was at least one machete in the throng.

But there was no way around. She'd have to risk it. She stepped from the shade.

"Here for the big show?"

Xana knew the voice. The American woman. The reporter. Abi something. She came through the little grove of overgrowth that separated the abandoned lot from the street.

Xana didn't turn. "Don't talk to me." A hot breeze blew her heavy, tangled curls in front of her eyes. Xana's wild hair was all that remained of the scrawny, wide-eyed girl of her youth. It was unmistakable, not least because it was a lighter brown than her skin. It had turned more than a few heads. Before.

Xana stared at the crowd as she pulled her wild hair back and affixed it into a bushy tail behind her head. It required constant care. If left untended for more than a day, it pounced from her head like a jaguar.

Abi smiled. "Every time you talk I expect you to sound like Andre the Giant."

"Who?"

"How's the foot?"

Xana stepped away, revealing her limp. Her right foot was mangled. She hid it inside her custom-ordered heavy work boots. "It's fine. Please leave me alone."

"I'm not your enemy, you know." The American followed past the pile of trash. She was tall, although nothing like Xana, and skinny with bony cheeks, a big nose, and sharp brown eyes. Her thin lips covered big teeth. Once straightened by braces, they had started slipping crooked in her 30s.

"That doesn't make you my friend."

"I never said I was your friend."

Xana turned and stopped. "Yes, you did." Then she kept walking.

"Right. Forgot about that. Sorry. I didn't think people would respond how they did."

"We can agree you didn't think."

"It was an honest mistake."

"This isn't America."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Stop following me."

"Will you please stop for just a second?"

Xana turned.

"Aren't you curious why there's a protest in front of your lawyer's office?"

"Mr. Rehnkist will know."

"You trust him?"

"He's my attorney."

"That's not what I asked."

"He's the only who stands up to the McDooms."

"He's not the only one."

"Don't flatter yourself. You report on them. There's a difference."

"It's because Feathers is in there."

Clement Feathers was the McDoom family attorney and a shark. Xana noticed the Mercedes parked down the street next to a row of palms.

"They're protesting the labor remission?"

Xana scowled. "The what?"

"You don't want to go through that crowd any more than I do."

Xana looked again at the listless young men. Some paced. Some sat on the off-white steps leading up to the veranda. The paint on the wood was cracked and chipping.

"There's a back door, you know—a walkway from the courthouse. Underground. The British built it in the colonial days. All linoleum and fluorescent lights now. But you'll need my press credentials to get you through security."

"I don't want your help."

"I know. But I guess I owe you. I have a son, too, you know."

"Then why aren't you with him?"

"It's a long story."

Xana looked at the crowd. They were lean. Hungry. "This doesn't mean I forgive you."

"Of course not."

Xana walked through the grove of trees, across a cracked asphalt road and onto the back lawn of the municipal courthouse. She stayed ahead of the reporter. Siegel. That was her name. Abi Siegel.

"Say, can I ask you something?" Abi had to walk double-time to match Xana's stride, even with her limp. "What are you going to do about Mama Enecio?"

"What about her?"

"She's a hard problem to shake."

"I stay away from gangsters."

"What about the fire this morning?"

Xana stopped on the grass. It was spotted in dead leaves and fronds from the line of tropical plants the rimmed the square. In the distance, the ocean. "What fire?"

"You haven't heard?" Abi looked Xana in the eyes. They were high. And striking. Like the woman's hair. "Really?"

"What are you talking about?"

Abi kept walking. "Talk to your lawyer. Then you should go home."

"Wait a minute." Xana walked after her. She grabbed the reporter's arm. "Wait."

"Don't touch me." The American pulled free. "I don't like people touching me."

"What fire?"

"Boraro and some of his goons made the drive out to Figtree. That's where you're staying these days, right?"

Xana nodded. It was a temporary arrangement with her cousin until she could get back on her feet. All the money Xana made working the graveyard shift went toward legal fees, toward getting her son back. It was all for AJ.

"Come on." Abi walked to the back door of the courthouse. The door creaked. A small security station rested at the bottom of a half-flight of stairs. The building smelled of dust and paper. The American flashed her credentials to the lone guard and nodded at Xana. "She's with me."

"Wait." The guard stood and raised his baton in front of Xana. "Turn around." He frisked her and lingered on her inner thighs.

Xana didn't flinch. She stared at the door.

After the groping, the pair walked down a long hall covered in weathered vinyl. Fluorescent shone overhead. The light was insufficient.

Abi turned. "Why do you let people do that?"

"Do what?"

"Push you around like that. You had two feet on that guy, and probably a hundred pounds."

"He's a policeman."

"So? Push him out of the way. This is Guyana. He's not going to say anything. And no one would care if he did."

"Malcolm McDoom would care."

The reported sized up the giant next to her. The tips of the woman's wild hair brushed the lights overhead. She looked so out of place. And that face . . . "You don't have any idea what Mama Enecio is after, do you?"

Xana shook her head.

"Or why she's got Boraro looking for you."

"Boraro?"

"The Disemboweler." Abi made quotes in the air.

"I told you. I don't know what you're talking about."

Abi stopped. She pointed down the hall to the stairs. "It's just up that way. Up the stairs. I hope Rehnkist has good news for you."

Xana watched the reporter walk back the way they'd came. That was quick. She was a huntress. She was after something. Xana wanted nothing to do with it. She walked up the stairs to the third floor, down the hall, and into Arthur Rehnkist's office. The man was in the next room with the door closed. He had no secretary and no windows. The walls were covered in faux-wood paneling to half their height. The rest was a faded lime green.

Xana sat and waited. She looked again at her hands. She made fists as a clock on the wall ticked seconds. Xana had been a pretty girl once, if a little scrawny. She started growing at puberty and never stopped. By her early 20s, when she passed six feet, it was clear something was wrong. That's when she went to the free clinic. That's when they told her about the monster.

The same thing that was killing her had also cost her her son. It wasn't just a pituitary tumor, they said—whatever that was. There was a defect, somewhere deeper down, inside the stuff that told all the other stuff what to do, in the code for a particular kind of protein. It made her muscles grow like tumors. Denser. Different. Her bones would thicken as a result of the increased strain, or so they said. But since muscle grows faster, the one would out-pace the other, and Xana would suffer fractures if she exerted herself. Her own body would break itself. And it had.

Eventually, they said, it would all exceed the capacity of her heart, which would explode in her chest. Best not exert yourself too hard. Best to stay calm.

She was almost 30. She'd be lucky to see the next decade.

Clement Feathers emerged from the next room and walked into the hall. He didn't acknowledge the big woman. He didn't look at her. He just walked right past. That was fine with Xana.

Rehnkist sat behind his desk. He was old, just like everything else in Royal House. His dark skin was wrinkled. He had lost most of his hair. The remainder was white. His suit didn't fit well.

He waved her in. "We have a few things to talk about."

"Did the judge rule on the motion?" Xana walked in and closed the door.

"We'll get to that." Rehnkist motioned to a chair. His hands shook. "That reporter came by earlier. The American. The one who wrote the story last year."

Xana nodded. "I saw her."

"That was a bad bit of business. I always wondered how much that contributed to the accident. But I never wanted to ask."

"What did the judge say?"

"Also, you got another encrypted email from your mysterious admirer. How many does that make now? Four? Five?"

"Four. Just delete it. Please."

"What are they sending you? If you don't mind me asking."

Xana shrugged. She wasn't sure how to describe it. "Stuff. Information. I don't always understand."

"Why you?"

"He wants me to do something."

"He?"

"The prophet." Xana stared at the court papers on the desk. "The judge said no, didn't he?"

"We knew that was a possibility." Rehnkist wouldn't make eye contact. "The situation with the car--"

"I thought you said he understood." Xana never saw the judge. Arthur said it would be better.

"He understands about the accident. I meant that living all the way out at Figtree Cove and with no car, you're having trouble with steady employment, which was a condition for reinstatement of visitation."

Xana had gotten frustrated with the jalopy she'd purchased. She'd spent all the money she'd saved working nights at the sugar plant. She hardly saw her son. But the job was a requirement for her retain custody. And the car was a requirement for the job. When it just stopped running, she knew she'd been taken advantage of. Again. Xana wasn't a clever woman, she knew. She felt watched: by the courts, by the McDooms, by everyone who stared at her as she passed. She was going to be late picking her son up from daycare. They only needed one excuse. She'd gotten angry. Why did she have to be so stupid? Why had she trusted the salesman?

Xana kicked the little car as it rested on the side of the dirt road. She kicked it with all her might. For anyone but Xana Jace, such an outburst would have resulted in little more than a stubbed toe and bruised pride.

For anyone but Xana Jace.

She tore the front of the vehicle and flipped it on its side, wrecking it and nearly injuring two pedestrians. She'd shredded most of her right foot, tearing through her shoes down to the bone, leaving her with a mangled stub, a persistent limp, no job, and no AJ. It was the perfect excuse for a wealthy, connected family to convince a judge.

Unfit, they said. Violent, they said.

Just look at her, they said.

"I haven't seen AJ in almost two years. How can they just keep me away? I'm his mother."

It hadn't helped that the story in the papers, the one by the Siegel woman, had cataloged her accidents like a shipping manifest. Xana was still growing. Her body had never stopped. She fumbled inside herself, a stranger in her own flesh. She hit her head on door frames and knocked over furniture. Children stepped closer to their parents when she appeared. She was training herself to force a constant smile. Without it, her heavy brow and prominent jaw lent her a persistent diabolical scowl.

But the smile, when she remembered it, always seemed so fake. Like she had something to hide.

Rehnkist raised his hand in the air above his desk and held it. His mouth hung open for a moment. "That's not the worst of it, I'm afraid." He lowered his hand on the desk. He glanced at his client and looked away. "The judge overruled the motion on grounds of inadequate jurisdiction." He looked at Xana for a reaction.

She was confused. "I don't know what that means."

"It means the judge doesn't have the authority."

"But how?"

"Because AJ is no longer in the country."

Xana froze. Her heart stopped. "Wha-- what? Where is he?" She stood.

"Calm down, Ms. Jace."

"No! Where is he? Is he okay? Where is my son?"

"America. New York, I think. Mr. Feathers's rejoinder didn't specify."

Xana paced in a circle. Her eyes clenched in tears. America. She could never get to America. "But how can they DO that? How can they just-- just--"

"Declun has legal custody. Once your visitation rights were revoked, AJ's residence was no longer a matter for the court."

Xana was crying. "But he's my son."

"I know. It's a terrible crime. But unfortunately, strictly speaking, it's not illegal."

Xana stood in the small windowless office and held her face in her big hands.

Arthur listened to her sob. He could tell she was holding back as best she could. "If it's any consolation, they sent him to get an education. Or so I'm told. Feathers wouldn't say where of course, but they wanted you to know it's a very fine private school that will prepare him for college."

Xana didn't respond. He'd be alone. In a strange country. He wouldn't know anyone. He was only seven. He'd be so scared.

Declun's family hated Xana, she knew. To them, she was a mongrel, an "untenable" mix: German-Argentinian on her father's side, some native blood, some east Indian, even a little Hispanic through her mother. She was a mutt. It was obvious. Just look at how her body had rebelled. And they were the McDooms, one of the oldest families in Guyana. They owned the sugar plant and a great deal of property overseas. They even had a village named after them. Xana passed the sign every time she went into town. It was a constant reminder.

Rehnkist pulled an envelope from a drawer and set it on the desk.

Xana knew what it was. A bill. She grabbed the little cross that hung around her neck. It hung under her shirt, and the cotton bunched in her hand. She felt the tips of the cross poke through to her skin.

The lawyer cleared his throat. "Are you sure you don't want to read that email?"

Xana shook her head. She grabbed the envelope from the desk and walked out. She walked down the hall in a daze.

AJ wasn't across town. He wasn't at his grandparent's summer retreat in Aruba. He was in America.

America.

Xana walked out of Royal House in tears. She forgot about the protest until the doors were open and she was standing on the off-white veranda. But the men were gone.

Xana was alone.