Chapter 2
SX14’s brakes squealed in earnest through her slid into the station, and when she finally stopped, her pumps hissed in release as she took a breather before her haul to Summit. The doors squeaked closed behind me since I was the last in the throng to board. I took a window seat on the far end away from the herd.
Leftover clouds from the thunderstorm arranged themselves on the morning sky like silverware ordered in rows for breakfast. The sun, enthusiastic to return after a day and night of loneliness, radiated through them and drenched the windows with warmth and light. Its greeting filtered through in spurts as the train wove between buildings and through tunnels. I waved goodbye to what little I could see of it when the windows dimmed to form a canvas for the morning news and announcements to play on. I needed to think by myself.
God, Isian lizards. Had I been imagining things? I recalled bits and pieces of an image of a pair of walking, talking lizards barging into my apartment in the middle of the night. I dismissed them as remnants of some fever dream. I mean, I’ve dreamt up worse things while high on meds, such as one where Bigfoot crashed into my place, ate all my food, defecated on my carpet, and finally molested my cat. The reason I understood it to be a dream was because I knew no cat would ever want to own me.
But giant sentient lizards coming to room with you? Bah, perish that nonsense.
If I had any delusions left from my morning-sick psychosis, reality squished them like roaches when I moved the couch to clean the mess and found the twins’ knapsacks lodged behind it. They contained everything and everything that an adult feral Isian needed to thrive in the wild: stale strings of some indeterminate meat, some bottles of fluid, shiny rocks and pieces of concrete, random objects of unknown purposes (I think one of them was a rolled-up ball of aluminum foil), and pricy computer units. One tablet was still paged onto an overhead map of the city. Route markers tagged the map in a more-or-less straight path from Summit to my apartment, all 46.2447 kilometers of it.
Isian lizards came to my home. Two of them! It defied belief. One day I’m living the carefree bachelor’s life without a worry or goddamn in the world and right the next day I’m… well, still a bachelor, but now one with two predatory beasties that ate more than he could possibly afford.
I didn’t know how much a full-grown Isian consumes, but I had a reliable estimate. Based on data I gathered from observing them over the past months, I used advanced mathematical algorithms and statistical analysis to get the highly scientific answer of: Way-Too-Fucking-Much-For-Lyle-To-Afford kg. Hell, I only needed to look at my poor kitchen. I actually went back and, honest to God, opened the refrigerator to discover that even my collection of years-old anchovies from the back wastelands were gone. I choked when I remembered they were carnivorous—meat is expensive, damn it! Unless I planned on subsisting on fiber supplements, ramen, baking soda, and other non-foodstuff, I needed to find a way to feed these new sets of meat-loving mouths.
And what about their beds? In Summit, they slept everywhere they damned well pleased. It worked there since it was huge, but that wouldn’t be possible in my mouse cage of an apartment. I had a feeling they would get bored with my room and end up wandering to God-knows-where.
Jesus, my neighbors! How the hell would they react to reptilian beasts wandering about the building? If I was lucky, none of them would know about the Isians yet considering the twins came in late at night and left early in the morning. But luck is something you always ran short of. Before I would know it, Grandma Janice down the hall would be batting lizards with her broom while the old timers that haunted the rec room would be recalling The War in the bottom of their trousers. I shuddered to think of how my bastard of a landlord would react. After all, the apartment had an unconditional no-pets rule.
Oh lord, were they housetrained? I had no clue, and it terrified more than anything else I could think of.
I leaned back into the seat and dug my head into the depression in the foam headrest. Too much had happened in the last ten hours, and I was too tired trying to come to terms with them all at once. I slumped in the seat and contented myself that I was but one in a long and prestigious line of victims of unwanted houseguests. My conscience, however, refused to leave the matter at rest. Tired of heeding to logic, I let emotion run free for a bit and argue with itself.
What the hell are you thinking, Lyle? Do you really need this? The single life not good for you? Have you reached that point in your life where you’re just dying to have more ridiculous responsibilities? People do that to make themselves feel like they’re worth something, you know. Is that it?
“No, not really. I feel worse.”
Oh, so that’s why you’re rooming with the twins, right?
“I didn’t let them stay with me so that I could be miserable, if that’s what you meant.”
Then why?
“That’s what people do. They help each other out.”
If those Isians are people, then I’m the Pope of Mars. Listen, if they really wanted to help you, they would have kidnapped a hooker, steal all her money, and bring her unconscious body and cash to your doorstep so that you can finally get some goddamn pussy. That’d be helping. That’d be helping a lot.
“I meant for me to help them, not the other way around, Christ. It’s not a bad thing to help others, you know.”
So you’re helping them by letting them freeload. Grand, that’s so much better. You know, maybe you wouldn’t be miserable if you tried growing a spine or something. I’m just saying.
“What do you suggest I should’ve done? Just kick them back out in the cold rain? I wouldn’t throw fucking mutts out in that weather, let alone my friends.”
Friends? Wait, those scaly things are your friends now?
“Yes.”
Oh God. This is even worse. Whatever, I don’t care what your proclivities are and whom you associated with. Your business. But there’s still time to make it right before they can get comfortable.
“Eh?”
Throw them the fuck out. Right now. Get on the train back, throw their shit out, change the lock codes, and bolt the damned windows shut. It’s the only way.
“There you go again being an asshole. I’m not doing that.”
Why the hell not? You actually want to live with them for God-knows how long? Is that what you want?
“No, it’s just that—”
Then what? This is your fucking place and your fucking rules. No one will blame you. What’s keeping you? What the hell is your malfunction?
“I just can’t stand to see Tia cry again.”
Screeches from the train’s brakes drowned my thoughts, and I tensed in my seat to fight the inertia from toppling me over. I quickly exited and left my conscience to its musings.
Life rumbled in the Spire’s belly as usual. Rumbling in a kind of lurching, living dead sort of way. It was Monday after all, that hallowed day of your work’s vengeance. Weekends are narcotics. You take your fix to escape that hard week you just had and wallow in its brand of ecstasy. But it never lasts long enough. You only get a taste, just this tantalizing bit dipped on the tip of your tongue, before the rush dies and your skull gets smashed a hundred kilometers an hour into the wall of withdrawal. Week-in and week-out, you toiled for days breaking your bones and beating your body climbing that ladder to reach those couple days of nirvana with outstretched hands. And at the end, you can only crash back down after you’ve run out of rungs.
I waded my way through the crowd of zombies that just went cold turkey from the drug. Their withdrawal symptoms usually subside by Tuesday, and they’ll get back to normal by Wednesday only to plunge into remission by Friday’s end. Repeat. Nasty stuff. It’s a good thing I worked seven days a week. I’ve always been a staunch anti-drug person myself.
Still like the trained corporate drone that I was, though, I pushed myself to set aside life’s worries and Isians and whatever else to focus on the greater cause of making the company money. Before I went to the labs and put my game face on, I thought to stop by the reception desk to indulge in last-minute frivolities. Aimee, in an act of brilliant redundancy, was hunched over and working on a computer. Mondays meant nothing to a machine.
I tapped for attention on her desk. “Hey Aimee, lookin’ good.”
Aimee looked up and drilled her eyes into me. She took longer to process my mug than was customary, and I found myself checking over my clothes for bird shit or piss or bloodstains or some other inner-city mess. Maybe my awesome good looks finally broke her? It took several seconds for her to untangled the words stuck in her memory banks.
“Mr. Ivano!”
“Yeah. Morning Aim—”
She reached over and took my shoulder like a vice. Not able to withstand her inhuman grip, my body slacked and allowed her to pull me around the front of the desk next to her, and she plopped me down onto the floor. My last sentence finished in a yelp when my pelvic bone pinched my ass against the marble. Shielded from the lobby inside the well of the circular desk, I had no view save for Aimee towering over me and scanning the lobby with precise flicks of her head. Seemingly satisfied, she tapped on the computer and knelt by me.
“God, what the heck, Aimee?” I said, arching my bottom up to rub it. “You’re going way too fast. We haven’t even dated yet.”
She leaned close and whispered. “Mr. Ivano, where have you been?”
Whispering—I didn’t know it was a feature on her model. When you hear a robot whispering to you, sounding like a squeaky mouse wheel that needed to be oiled, you paid attention because it unnerved the ears. I sat up.
“Where have you been?” she repeated.
“I was home. I just came to work.” I said it slowly, trying to gauge her reaction, but got nothing. She sat next to me and crossed her arms around her legs. “What’s going on here?”
“Everyone’s been looking for you all morning.”
“Looking for me? Why?”
“Please stop, Mr. Ivano. We have enough to worry about without your irreverence. You know why.”
“No, Christ I don’t. You mind filling an idiot in?”
“Mr. Ivano, are you honestly not aware of the Isians?”
“What about them?”
“They have been missing all of yesterday and have not appeared this morning either.”
“Yeah, because they’ve been at my home.”
Aimee twisted her head and stared at me. For the second time, I thought she broke again when her face jammed as if my statement blew out the power above her neck. I tried to eke an expression out of her by waving. She restored a frown with a single shake of the head.
“Aimee?”
“I think you should talk to Mr. Lefko. I had asked for him to come. He wishes to speak to you. I hope he will be here soon.”
Just as she uttered the prayer, the divine answered with a bellow that echoed over the desk: “Hey! Aimee! Where are ya?” Automatically, Aimee planted her feet to the floor and untangled herself up with robotic grace. She dragged me up along with her and jerked me standing. I had to grab the edge of the desk to prevent myself from losing my balance, contrasting to Aimee standing like a soldier at attention.
“Over here, Mr. Lefko,” she called.
“Dammit, Aimee, how many times have I told you to never call me—” Ernest cast his gaze to me when I waved hello. “Lyle! Where in the hell have you been?”
I shrugged. “Making out with Aimee. You know Ernest, robots aren’t as good as they say.”
“Goddammit kid, this isn’t no time to play games! Half of fuckin’ Summit is looking for you, and you’re here cracking jokes like an idiot. Shove it!”
The shockwave from Ernest slapping the desk shook my hands off the edges. I stepped back and met his glare. His eyes burned me through with righteous brimstone. I turned to Aimee, hoping for consolation, but she just stood. He leaned over the desk with his hands spread over the surface and arms looking to swallow me.
“Where’s the lizards, Lyle?”
“I don’t understand. What’s going on?”
“I asked you where the fuck the lizards are.”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see them this morning.”
“‘This morning?’ So you knew where they were?”
“Yes, they came to my place the other night.”
“Your place? They came to your place?”
“That’s… what I said, yeah. They said they were going to stay with me for a while.”
His eyes flew open. He blinked a few times, breathed in deeply, and opened his mouth. I slunk back and braced myself for the scolding that I knew was incoming. What I got instead was boisterous laughter. The bellows echoed through the lobby and incited gawks from passersby. He clutched his gut and doubled over the desk, and his cheeks heaved until they flushed from exertion. The guffaw was so insistent that it became a parasite, and it wormed into me as a larval chuckle. It never grew since it didn’t know what the hell it was supposed to feed on. Aimee just stood.
He puffed out his red cheeks, swallowed, and tempered his laughter enough to speak. “Ah Lyle, you son of a bitch! I swear, just when I thought I knew you,” he said between wheezes. He grabbed my shoulder and patted me on the back. “All this time they’ve been worried to death, all this damn time. A-haha! Christ!”
I just nodded as he rubbed my back.
“So he is not in any sort of trouble, Mr. Lefko?” Aimee asked.
“What trouble?” I said.
“Nah,” Ernest said to Aimee. “Don’t think he has anything to worry about, just so long as the lizards are safe. This whole thing was about them after all. You know how much Tetra loves those goddamned things.”
“What trouble?” I said again.
“Oh, that is good,” Aimee said. “I am glad that they will not have to deploy those military mechs.”
“Military mechs?” I said.
Ernest shook his head and patted Aimee’s shoulder. “Don’t worry ’bout it, gal. Mils are too expensive to deploy anyway. You know how this place is with their goddamned money. I mean they would at least give him until noon before releasing the kill-bots.”
“True,” said Aimee, nodding.
I nearly screamed my words.
“What the hell? Kill-bots? Deploy? Me? What’s going on here, guys?”
Ernest smiled, took my arm to lead me out from the desk, and said, “Don’t worry about that, kid. Everything’s fine now, you just let ol’ Ernest take care of this.” He straightened my collar. “All you have to worry about now is that Wyvern broad. She came in last night. Been having fits all morning.”
“Ms. Neuman was quite distressed,” said Aimee.
“Yep. Been around all morning yelling and screaming and moaning and groaning about this and about that and about these and about those and everything else. Oh boy. The last time I heard screeching like that was when I bought that thong for the wife, God bless her soul. Oh I eventually got her wearing that slinky little thing all right, and lemme tell you…”
I didn’t see a point in lingering. As much I liked hearing about old grandmas and lingerie and the wearing of such lingerie by said grannies, I had more important things to take care of, such as driving a rusty nail through my toes (no disrespect to the late Mrs. Lefko of course). Convinced that I had nothing more to learn here, I backed away so the two hens could cluck among themselves, and I left with with more questions than answers.
A contingent of security guards milled in the hallways joining the engineering labs. The Secondary Engineering guards with their brown garbs wandered about in search of invisible wrongdoers as per usual operations. But something else was amiss. I peeked inside the hallway. Tucked inside was an even larger group of aliens, clad in black and ordered in rows in the hall. I froze a few steps in. Sigma Security. What the hell were blacksuits doing here?
The “blacksuits,” so-called due to their full armored suits that covered their bodies (any similarities of the name with certain despotic World War II-era police groups weren’t incidental), were the armed professionals that Tetra hired to secure Primary Sigma and related labs. A somehow-legal paramilitary force was what they amounted to, really. You couldn’t find them anywhere else but Sigma and from myths spread by whispers. But I walked passed at least twenty of these mythical beings equipped with menacing assault rifles and opaque riot helmets that concealed their faces. Their uniform and equipment alongside their years of training had dissolved their human identities and transformed them into machines, just the way your private military contractors like them. Not to be outdone by meat-bodies, a couple military-grade sentry bots patrolled the hallways, their cold forms a touch more soulless than their human comrades.
Three guards at PE-1. Three guards at PE-2. Four guards and a robot at Administration. Two guards at SE-1. The stock of Tetra’s army replaced the coffee-fueling engineers that loitered in the hallways. As the lone mortal in the corridor, I slunk through the gauntlet as not to attract attention.
“Hey, how’s it going?” I said to a guard posted at the entrance of SE-2. It didn’t respond. The door opened and I hurried in.
I hugged my back against the door when it slid shut behind me. Missing lizards, Aimee and Ernest freaking out, the Gestapo… you think there was a connection? And maybe, just maybe, I was at the center of it all? It was just something tingling in the back of my head. Call it a hunch. You don’t get perks like these working in any ordinary company, no sir. These were government-level benefits.
The smart thing to do would be run out the building to the nearest airport and book a ticket to Tijuana. (Or walk out, since you’re not supposed run past rabid dogs—maybe you can skip as compromise.) Just bail on life. I would think that’s the normal response when normal people hear they were close to being victims of military robots. Maybe I figured “kill-bots” was high-tech military jargon for, I don’t know, kittens or something. Small fluffy kittens with missile launchers.
“What do you mean you don’t know where he is? Aren’t you his damned boss?” someone screeched and broke through my thoughts. I perked up. That voice! If you strain your ears deep until the world sounded underwater, you could almost make out the songbird that the shrieking caws were mobbing to death. I can recall only two people at Summit whose voice had such range. Just my luck, the other also happened to be in the same room! What are the odds? It’s like winning the shitcake lottery.
“Hey babe, I ain’t his goddamned momma. He’s a big boy if you haven’t fucking noticed,” the other voice bellowed.
I peered to the arena. Sure enough, there they were: Mark and the “Wyvern broad” Ernest had mentioned. They glared at each other something fierce. Arlene’s fists clenched tightly at her sides, and she stood with her neck strained up to meet Mark’s eyes. She trembled on her heeled shoes as a condemned building seconds away from demolition. Mark smirked with crossed arms and the detonator.
Arlene brought an arrowed finger to Mark’s face.
“Listen to me and listen good. I’ve been fed bullshit from you and everyone else at Summit all morning, and I’m sick of it. Either you tell me what I want to know or, so help me, I’ll have your head!”
“Oh you just wanted head, is that it?” He started undoing his belt. “Hey babe, I gotta get before I give. Let me unzip my pants here, and you can get started.”
“Don’t you ever call me ‘babe’ again, you slimeball!”
“Whatever turns you on, toots.”
Arlene’s glasses couldn’t contain her widened eyes and slipped to the tip of her nose. She flared a reddened fist open and bowed it above her head. Mark stooped down a head’s length and tilted a cheek toward her with a clownish grin. That was enough for me. God knows I didn’t want to be a passive witness to the beating the beast would inflict on the twig—my conscience wouldn’t let sleep. Besides, Mark was a heavy bastard, and I couldn’t haul him to St. Lucy’s by myself. I hurried down to the arena.
“Hey guys, ease up!” I called out. “Not in front of the children.”
With her hand still suspended in the air, Arlene flicked her head to source my voice. Her face locked to me, and she slowly pivoted in her place. I stopped and she glared at me with a heavy gaze that quickly furrowed into anger. Mark stepped away and mouthed a silent, “Oh shit.”
“That’s him!” she shouted, wriggling a finger at me.
The shriek bound my legs stiff, and before I could shit out a response, my arms were twisted behind me and my head was jerked back until I was staring at lights. My legs gave way and I crumpled to me knees. I tried to break free, but was rewarded with my head jammed back until I couldn’t breathe. I tried to take in air, but something covered my mouth with rubber grips that injected an industrial stench into my nostrils. I tried to scream, but nothing came out except jagged wheezes. The rubber tightened over my face chaffed off the skin. The pain from my strained shoulders tied me to the ground. My eyes watered and the world brightened until it looked like a sheen of oil had doused it. The lights then became distant. I struggled to reach them. No use.
Before the lights could die, the gloves came off my mouth and my head was forced down. A tug on my hair shook the air out and compelled me to breathe. I could only taste the fresh air before my head was yanked back up to look at Arlene. She was maybe a meter away, but the room seemed inadequate to cage her. I could see her grind her teeth together, and I could hear it. It was the sound of knives sharpening upon each other. My mind raced. Don’t make sudden movements. Don’t make loud noises. Don’t make eye contact. On my knees and still trying to heave the life back into me, I could only wait for her to make the first move. She stared down at me.
“Where are they, Lyle?”
Her tone was colder than I expected, and it chilled my ears. I wandered my eyes around the room to find support from my colleagues. No one, not even Mark. I took in more breaths. Anyone and anything! I was alone in a locked cage. My eyes crept back up to the woman but stopped at her neck. Don’t look at its eyes, that only enrages them.
That wasn’t good enough for her. She clenched my chin up to her and snapped her fingers to my face. “Hey! Are you listening to me?” She grabbed my ears and shook my head until it hurt. “Where are they, Lyle? Where are the Isians?”
“I… they…” Repeatedly, I tried to start again only for the words to fracture under her stare. Nothing but sputters. I gave up. My lips fused together, and I closed my eyes. Don’t make noises. It startles them and they’ll attack. Breathe, breathe!
Not allowing me to suck in another gulp of air, a sharp crack smashed across my face. The smack blew my eyes open and rattled through my skull. Before I could register the pain, Arlene grabbed me by the collar, forced me to my feet, and slammed my back against the thug, who then bolted his hands onto my shoulders. Arlene pressed a fist into my throat so that I could only defend myself with gargles.
“Where are my lizards?!” she screamed, blasting her words through my eardrums.
“I don’t know!” I yelped. Her rage had knocked the sense and words back into me, but I was babbling on instinct.
“Don’t lie to me!”
“I don’t know! I don’t know!”
“Why don’t you know? Why? Answer me! Answer me, Lyle!”
“I just don’t!”
Welled-up tears begged their way out my eyes. I pinched my eyelids to shut them in. It was the final effort to the masculinity I had left. The woman snapped me in half like a rotten toothpick. Arlene’s noose lightened around my neck as I did everything I could from breaking down into a crying mess. She released me. I heard a few clack-clacks of heels on the floor and then rummaging off somewhere. Crashes echoed through the numb room as stuff broke against the floor, the sounds of which repeated in increasing frequency. The clacks sounded again, coming louder toward me, and I braced myself. I winced when she tapped my cheek several times, the skin still raw from the slap.
“Open your eyes and look at this,” she said.
Cautiously, I peeled open my eyes and found myself looking into the screen of a smart tablet. Arlene held the device close to my face, which thankfully blocked her head. I stared into the screen at rows of text and icons. “If you don’t know, then explain this to me,” she said, pushing the tablet even closer to my face.
Déjà vu. My reading and inductive skills crept back. At the center of the screen, buried among random elements, glowed a snippet of text:
Primary Network: I.C. Wyvern Stage 1 (restricted public)
Sender: Tiamat Cusaris (reg.)
Recipient: Arlene E. Neuman (reg.)
Protocol: ICN-L v2.3a
Encryption: None
Timestamp: 3433s,45593
Additional Information Hidden
Hi Arlene! We just got to Lylee's house. He has such a great
place! You should see it. It's beautiful. Anyway, since we're
here now you don't have to worry about finding a place for us
anymore. Lylee promised he'd take care of us and everything.
It's going to be so much fun!
Can you get another tube of medicine for basil? His throat is
pretty bad from the rain. Lylee doesn't have any.
Love, TiaI read the message once. Twice. Many times. Too many times. I blinked my eyes and strained them wider trying to make sense of it. Arlene sighed and pulled the tablet away from my head, leaving me to stare out into space in disbelief. She cleared her throat and tapped her foot impatiently. I shifted my eyes to look at her while keeping my head still.
“Well? Care to explain it?” she asked.
Care to explain this? Explain what? Was she mad because she got a letter? Was that it? Did that enrage her? Was it such a grave insult? What the fuck was there for me to explain? I didn’t even write the goddamn thing! I said, “It’s a letter, I think.” What else was I supposed to say?
“Just a letter, huh Lyle?” she said with a sneer. “Just a letter to keep us of your trail, is that right?”
“What are you on about? Keep you off what?” I tried straightening myself up, but the goon pressed my shoulders back down.
“Don’t play stupid with me, Ivano! Just fess up! I know everything.”
“Fess up? What am I confessing? I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!”
She squeezed the smart tablet until it bowed and then threw the flopping screen away behind her. Again, I straightened myself up in defense when she came up to me. She brought up her hand, and I tensed. Stay fucking still. It won’t hit you again if you stay still. Instead, she gripped her fist close to my face and squeezed the blood into it. She flicked out a finger between my eyes.
“So, you like playing games? You just love hearing how smart you are, eh?”
I parted my lips, but she jabbed my jaw shut with her other hand. The thug behind me brought a hand over my mouth.
“All right Lyle, I’ll play your game,” she said with a condescending sneer, tapping her outstretched finger on my drenched forehead. “I’ll play along with your stupid little game.”
She circled me as she spoke, and her laughing howls that echoed through the room were an invitation for other scavengers to the fray. They didn’t come because they didn’t need to: her own fangs were enough shred into my flesh and bone. I couldn’t do anything but stand like the prey I was when she started her attack.
“So Lyle? How much do they pay you here? Couldn’t be much, I’d imagine, you being the skill-less loser that you are. Not enough to live that mansion you always dreamed about? Couldn’t buy that yacht you always wanted? Not enough to buy those thirteen whores-for-girlfriends you lusted over since the second grade? I’m pretty sure you don’t, because you’re just too worthless for them to pay you anything. But that’s not good enough for you, right? You simply need more. No, I mean, you deserve more, right? Deserve the riches of the world because you’re just oh-so-much better than the rest of the hardworking and honest people of the world. Scum!
“But hey, you’re a reasonable guy, right? You’re just biding your time. You can handle a couple of years of this stuff, just until you get enough to leave this hellhole and get somewhere else. Someplace even more worthless than this dump. Someplace where you can get that night-shift management position you always dreamed about. Finally, you can sit around in your nice white shirt you bought for three dollars and tax and lord over those minimum-wage slops. Oh, you might even get to wear a tie! Just five more years here before you finally can get your dream job. That’ll show those corporate assholes, wouldn’t it? Bastard!
“Oh, but something happened, didn’t it? Messed up your glorious and intricate plan. Because suddenly, one day, someone had to come and show you up. Company hires a hotshot new guy, younger, faster, and much smarter than you are, and will ever be. Now you’re not the top dog anymore, you’re just a second-place lackey loser. Loser! Everything you worked for, gone! And on top of that insult, it wasn’t just some college grad who graduated magna cum laude from an Ivy League, but a couple of goddamn animals! Animals! That outrage just got your blood boiling, didn’t it Ivano? Something had to go, and you made damned sure that it wasn’t you. Right? You son of a bitch!”
She spat those last few words in my face. She placed her hands on cocked hips and looked on with the satisfaction of someone who just strangled a child to death.
“Am I right?” she said. “Or did I get some things wrong? So who did you sell them to? How much did you get for them? I always wanted to know what the rate is on morality.”I
“I… what the hell are you talking about?”
“Oh cut the shit, Ivano, I know all about it! Kidnap the Isians, sell them to some shady dealer for who-knows-how-much, create a bogus message that you sent from your own computer at home to keep everyone off your back. Be once in your life a goddamn man and admit it!”
I yelled at her. “No! What the fuck is wrong with you? You don’t know me!”
Arlene seemed shocked from my outburst. The reaction surprised even me.
Something broke inside. Suddenly, I felt a drive to blow through her insanity, a power activated after she crossed some moral line drawn at the idea I was willing to sell out the Isians. We stood against each other in silent deadlock. I didn’t look away from her confused stare as my manhood jolted back. Pain seared my palms from my nails digging into them, but I didn’t care. Arlene continued to stare at me, which gave me a moment’s breather to resurrect myself. Fuck you woman! No fucking way am I a backstabbing kidnapper! I tempted fate and pulled out against the goon behind me. Arlene dropped her jaw to peek out a word, but I cut her off.
“You’ve heard of Occam’s Razor, right? Ever considered that instead of a giant conspiracy of me spending months befriending Isians so that I can kidnap them, I just may be a decent guy? You know, like most everyone else on earth? I know that’s kind of tough for you to understand, Arlene, but not everyone in the world is a cankerous bitch like you!”
My facial muscles tensed with that last shot in preparation to receive another slap. I didn’t care. I pulled harder against the thug and forced him to wrestle me back in. Air snorted out my nostrils when my cheeks hollowed out, and I turned the side of my face toward Arlene and dared her to take out another hit. Do it, you fucking bitch. You know you want it. The Mark Ellis impression must have stunned her. Her mouth quivered as if words had bottled in her throat, and when she finally spoke, her voice fizzled dry.
“So, you’re saying that really went to stay with you? In their own volition?”
“Yes, goddammit! Yes! That’s what happened.”
“And you have nothing to hide?”
“God no. That misunderstanding was all yours.”
“Then explain to me why you disabled Tia’s tracking module.”
I cringed. “What tracking module?”
“The tracker. The one embedded in Tia’s collar? Don’t tell me you didn’t know.” She pointed accusingly at me. “Don’t you dare tell me you didn’t know.”
“Christ.” I struggled to recall previous night. She was wearing her collar, wasn’t she? She must have, I know it! What’s going on here? “I don’t know anything about any tracker.”
“Oh? You don’t? Because as it so happened, it was disabled early last night, just as the twins disappeared from Summit. You sure you don’t know anything about it?”
“Maybe it got damaged when they walked to my place? It was raining pretty hard.”
“This is military-grade equipment you’re talking about, and it takes more than a little drizzle to destroy it. It was disabled. We received a kill signal just as it died. You can’t do that accidentally. It takes someone with some skill to do that. Someone with skill but not a lot of sense.” She came close to my face and glared. “Like say, a Tetra engineer?”
Her accusation took a few seconds to bite in. I flung against the goon only to be pushed back out. My cheeks ballooned, unprepared to receive the influx of air, and my throat choked it out again.
“Oh God, no! I had nothing to do with it! For fuck’s sakes Arlene!”
“Then who? Who? Who wouldn’t want us to know where they were? Right now you’re the only one I can see, Lyle!”
“No! No, no, no! This is bullshit, nothing happened! They came to my apartment and that was it! I don’t know what the hell you think I did or who I am, but I don’t care. I could’ve said no, I could’ve told them to go away, but I didn’t. You know why? Because I’m a goddamn friend, and this is what goddamn friends do!”
I was nearly in tears. That miraculous pool of courage had dried up, and I was dredging mud. It was over. I didn’t care anymore. The shot of adrenaline frayed my vocal cords into crackling shreds and burned through my energy. It was no longer a fight for me to win. No longer wanting to wrestle with my legs, I let myself go and felt the crunch of my kneecaps striking the floor. As a last act of bravery, I faced Arlene in defeat. She had her hands over her mouth and stepped back.
“Oh my God,” she said, her hands muffling her words. “You’re telling the truth, aren’t you? Let him go. Let him go, you idiot!”
The guard released his hands from my shoulders, and I slumped on the floor. The joint between my neck and shoulders found the end of a desk and followed it until my body bowed across the floor. No use righting myself up. Arlene knelt by me. With my head drooped down, I could only see her legs straining through a skirt and perched atop glossy heels. They were pretty legs.
She tapped my shoulders—I almost didn’t feel it when it brushed against my shirt. I strained my head up and saw a face drained of malice and vigor. Her dark hair frayed around the glasses that framed her cheeks. It was a pretty face.
“Lyle, listen. I just need to know where are. That’s it, okay? Can you tell me that?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t. They came last night and left somewhere before I woke up.”
“Ah.” She sighed. It was a pretty sigh.
“I’m sorry, Arlene.”
She was about to say something when a voice across the room bullied its way in. It was the voice of my savior. “Hey! Hey! Miss! Ah, miss!” Shallow, jagged breaths wove between the words as the person struggled to keep pace jogging down the steps to the arena. He wiped a layer of sweat off his brow, bent over, and panted with his hands on his knees after reaching us.
I looked up to him. “Ernest?”
He clutched his chest and gestured me to wait with a wave of his hand. He stood up, took a breath with a cough, and straightened his pants back up. A couple of blacksuits challenged him with their rifles, but he knocked away the guns with an irritated scoff. He stretched his arms to me.
“Dammit kid, what the hell are you doing running away and getting yerself into trouble before I can take care of things? You wanna get blasted by these numbskulls here or something?”
“That wasn’t really my plan, no.”
He chuckled and saw Arlene staring at him in confusion. He took off his fedora and placed it over his chest as she rose to her feet.
“And you are?” she asked.
Ernest bowed his head. “The humble Ernest Lefko, Summit Engineering Department, at your service, ma’am. And you must be this Arlene Neuman that I’ve been hearing about. A pleasure to finally meet your acquaintance.” He took the back of her hand and placed a kiss on it.
“Uh, yes, Mr. Lefko,” Arlene said, her voice lingering as he did with her hand. “Can I help you with anything?”
“Just Ernest. Or Ernie, like all my friends do.”
“Right, Ernest. What do you want?”
“Ah well, I see you have been making chit-chat with my pal Lyle here, yeah?”
She eyed me. “We’ve been talking about some things, yes.”
“Don’t worry about him too much. He’s a good kid. Smart, hardworking, great guy, but not very savvy, you know? Look at him!” He flared his arms out to present me like a carnival sideshow. “He’s too dopey to think anything. Look, you wanna talk business with someone, I’m your man here. Tell you anything you need, and then some. We’ll do it over breakfast, on me.”
“That’s kind of you, but I—”
Ernest hooked his arms around hers and pulled her away. “But nothing, I insist! I know this great little diner. Lovely waitresses. Not as lovely as you, of course.”
Arlene seemed too bewildered to resist and let him snatch her up. She turned back and gave me one last look before they exited the labs. I was left by myself, tattered and crumpled next to the boots of some Sigma Security, and presented my shame and embarrassment for the curious heads that peeked into the lab. I willed what energy I had left into my legs and steadied myself up. Looking around at all the gaping eyes, I limped up the stairs did what anyone else would have done.
I went to my workstation and began to work.