The Pedestal (17 page)

The gears of my mind are beginning to shudder and creak to life in a groggy slush. I suppose I’m not completely surprised that he’s here—on some level, I think I’ve understood since the day Keith invoked the man’s name that he was somehow at the bottom of everything. I have to assume that Mitzy marginalized his significance because she simply didn’t know better. Or, in the grand scheme of things, maybe she was right. Only, scaled down to real life, it doesn’t matter much who’s pulling the strings—when you’re looking down the barrel of a gun, the triggerman is considerably less significant than the velocity of his bullet. There’s no room in that equation for politics or puppetry.

I don’t care what brought this devil to my door. The inescapable truth is that no one crosses Palmer Gunn and lives to tell the story.

I have no reason to think I’ll be an exception.

Mr. Gunn has me delivered to an old warehouse, where he promises we can
talk as loud as we want
. Once there, the door is locked and three of his minions immediately start to work me over. No effort is made to restrain me—save for the beating itself, that is—but I doubt I’d get far anyway. I lose consciousness almost immediately, but I don’t think that stops them. When I come to, they’re still going—grunting and yapping like a pack of wild dogs—only they’ve moved from my ruined face down to my hands, snapping fingers like pretzels with their booted heels. My screams are blood-curdling, and I’m as traumatized by the sound of them as I am by the pain that spawned them.

Then, as suddenly as it began, the beating stops. Whimpering like a starving puppy, I try to open my eyes; one is unresponsive, but the other permits a sliver of light, just enough to see that we’re not done, merely on a break. My attackers have retreated to make way for their boss, who is standing over me again with pistol in hand. He rests the weapon against my forehead and smiles.

Despite the horror of all this, I’m not really afraid. The worst is over, after all—dying should be easy by comparison. Gunn doesn’t pull the trigger, though. Rather, he hunches at the waist and speaks—and what he has to say is far more menacing than the prospect of death.

“I’m gonna start with her toes, understand?” he says. I don’t, though my face is surely too swollen to express it. “Then I’m gonna fillet her legs, and work my way up north.”

I stare at him through the slit of my eyelid, dripping blood on the concrete floor in a steady trickle.

“And when she thinks she can’t handle any more, when she’s ready to beg me to just end it all? I’m gonna light that little hag on fire.” The gun leaves my head, though I scarcely notice. Gunn chuckles in a low, wheezing vibrato, scratching his chin with the barrel of his gun. I guess it’s too much to ask for him to pull the trigger while he’s at it. “Any idea what something like that feels like, kid?” he whispers. “To be on fire? To feel the flesh melt right off your bones?”

I have no idea who it is with such a lovely evening ahead of her, but I’m truly afraid for her. I open my mouth to speak, but I have no words. Not that it matters—my tongue is too swollen to permit intelligible speech, anyway.

“Poor little Mitzy,” he says wistfully. I feel my heart lurch in my chest and I groan. I don’t know which Mitzy he’s referring to, and it doesn’t even matter. I’m petrified by the thought that either one should suffer, particularly on my behalf.

“Of course, it doesn’t have to be that way.”

I spend a few blurry nights in a hospital. Doctors dope and stitch me up without a single question—my condition must be self-explanatory. Throughout my stay, I’m in and out of consciousness as steroids and stem-cell injections are administered to my throbbing hands. On what I estimate to be day three, I’m discharged with a clean bill of health. I step into the sunshine, more or less healed on the outside, still aching on the inside.

My muscles are weak, rendered flaccid by days of inactivity, but the sun feels fantastic on my skin. Tears spring to my eyes, and I make no effort to hold them back. Birds are chirping; a river barge bellows a tenor hello.

I can’t believe I’m still alive.

Looking around, I tap my implant to establish some bearings in this unfamiliar part of the city. Glancing behind me, it occurs to me that this place can’t be a hospital; it has the look of an abandoned office building—decrepit, unkempt and utterly forgotten—and there’s no listing for it in the nexus directory. Pondering this, I hobble on stiff ligaments—wobbling like a weak-legged fawn—to the curb. There, I slump to the sidewalk in an exhausted heap to wait for a tram. Everything feels off, like my brain is free-floating in fluid, bouncing around as I move and sending out fragmented signals.

Three hundred years later—or eighty-five minutes, for those who prefer to split hairs—I reach my front door. My condo is trashed. Adrian—or perhaps Gunn’s guys—has taken the liberty of picking my belongings clean of anything worth saving before fleeing the building. I half-expect to find a note from Adrian—some weak attempt to justify what she’s done, some impotent apology—but then I remember: she probably thinks I’m dead.

Worse, she wanted me dead.

This thought swells in my chest, and it hurts. It hurts so badly that I truly wish I was dead, because the pain of betrayal can’t follow me there.

Now that I’m home—in my comfort zone, despite the state of disarray I’ve found it in—my mind finally begins to make a contribution to my survival. For the second time in my life, I enable the privacy settings on my NanoPrint. Similarly, I clear my MentalNotes, in case they’re in some way accessible. I know this won’t befuddle anyone with direct database access, but it feels like something. When I’ve finished, I step into a steamy and precarious shower, reveling in the hot spray even as I gasp with every painful move.

My body is healing, I know, yet my heart festers in its wounds. How could I have been so blind? Adrian walked into my life within hours of my discovering Arthur’s list. She pretended to like the things I like—real coffee, old movies, et cetera—and I bought the lie wholeheartedly. I forsook the physics of romance in fair trade for keeping Adrian in my life. I am—and will surely always be—the polar opposite of the man whom women are purported to desire. I lack the credit account, personality, physique, sense of humor, style, and charisma to explain how someone like Adrian could be in any way attracted to me. I know this with certainty now, and I must’ve known it on some level then, too. Maybe I was just afraid of jinxing my profound luck, of allowing my objectivity to crowd out the woman of my dreams.

I don’t know why I’m beating myself up over this—I feel like I’ve been adequately punished for my stupidity, already—especially now, when I should be concentrating on more important things. I have precious little time to work with, and absolutely no game plan. If I don’t come up with one soon—now, in fact—bad things are going to happen.

I agreed to Gunn’s conditions under extreme duress, yet I’m no less ashamed of myself. If only he’d just shot me dead. If only that devil hadn’t dangled hope in my face. If only I had been a better person—a stronger, braver man—in that moment, I’d have left this world with some dignity—if not peace—and my worries would have died with me.

But that’s not what happened. The despicable truth is, I begged for my life. And, like some demigod, Palmer Gunn granted it—with some strings attached. Thanks to my weakness, I’ve been dealt an impossible decision. Somehow, I have to locate Mitzy—or
Misty
, if you prefer—and personally deliver her to Gunn. If I fail to do this, Misty’s young, beautiful—and completely unwitting—scapegoat will die in her place. Either way, I’m pretty sure my life is over. Actually, that might be the worst part of all—not my death, but that I would sacrifice another human being, just for the privilege of living a few more days.

With a gun to my head, I was revealed to be a hopeless coward. But now that I’m free—if only for a short while—I intend to redeem myself.

I don’t know how, but there has to be a way.

They’ll be following me, I’m sure; waiting for me to clear a path straight to one Misty Edwards. I’m expected to deliver her myself, but guys like Gunn don’t leave much to chance. And with good reason, in this case. I have no intention of looking for her, much less giving her up. Right now, I have more important concerns. Misty is safe enough for the moment: her whereabouts are a mystery to us all, and frankly she’s proven far more industrious than anyone might have imagined.

As for Mitzy 2.0—
my
Mitzy?

Thanks to me, she’s in imminent danger, and I can’t protect her on my own. I need help, yet I have no one. For all my uncertainty, one thing is quite clear: I need to get moving. That’s easier said than done, I’m realizing. After all, where can anyone go to escape the watchful eye of the nexus?

With nothing concrete in mind, I hurriedly pack a duffel bag with clothes and toiletries. Glancing around my condo, I’m overwhelmed with a sense that, once I walk out the door, I won’t be returning. I’ll miss it, I know. As the seconds pass, I feel more and more frantic about my presence here, as if the devil himself will burst through my door any time now—and with every moment that I survive here, the odds seem to increase that the next moment will find me dead.

Still, I risk a few minutes to do something I should’ve done days ago. I launch the network settings on my portable terminal and disable all wireless access. It’s useless now, except as a reader for Arthur’s file—the ridiculous text file that started it all.

It’s pouring rain as I leave, fat droplets pelting off the pavement like marbles. I could kick myself for overlooking this detail, because I’m not dressed for it and it might ultimately slow me down. But it’s too late to change clothes; I’ve already given myself more time here than my better judgment can tolerate. I cover my head with the duffel bag and barrel into the rain.

I catch a tram to the nearest shopping mall, where I buy a hot cup of coffee. I find a seat in the crowded food court and sip from my cup. I’m soaked, and I’m freezing, but the coffee helps. For a while, I practice being anonymous—it shouldn’t be too hard, considering that I’ve all but perfected the art of invisibility with the ladies—but right away I seem to catch someone’s eye. There’s a man hovering by the entrance of a vitamin outlet. That alone is a red flag—I mean, who window shops at a vitamin store?—but there’s something else. Every few seconds, he looks around as if he’s waiting for someone, and his eyes pass innocently over me. What bothers me is that his gaze seems to linger just over my head, or next to me, for no reason—there’s nothing beyond me save for an unadorned wall. I’m not positive, but I strongly suspect he’s one of Gunn’s crew, keeping watch over me. If so, I sincerely hope he doesn’t find cause to come after me; he’s built like a rhino—all muscle and girth, and the knobby angles of a brawler—and I’m pretty sure he’d mash me to a pulp just by brushing against me.

It’s hard not to get freaked out by this stuff. Days ago, the worst of my problems amounted to keeping my transgendered boss’s first names square. Given everything that has happened, and knowing what I know now, I’ll be shocked if I’m still alive by dinner. Speaking of food—and despite the stress of this entire situation—I’m suddenly starved. The aroma of Indian and Italian cuisine isn’t helping, either; my stomach is cursing like a sailor.