The Saffron Malformation (88 page)

             
Rachel gaped, her fingers trembling as they touched her lips.  Natalie gasped, “Oh shit,” and sat hard on the sofa. Leone didn’t blink.  His whole body trembled.

             
“This atrocity will be answered for,” Richter Crow assured the crowd and the image was gone.  “Not just because she was my daughter but because I will not stand by and abide an organization willing and capable of doing this to any human being.”  He looked into the camera and said, “Rest assured we know who you are.  We will find you.  We will not take prisoners.”

             
“Screen off,” Natalie said absently.

             
“Screen on,” Leone barked.

             
The screen obliged both commands.  Everyone looked to Leone.  He was focused on the image of his father, clear as if he were standing in the room.

             
“…group would suddenly deviate toward such a direction?”  The screen came back in the middle of a reporters question.  “I mean until now anti-corps has never taken a hostage or engaged in such behavior.”

             
Richter Crow took a moment, let out a long sigh, then had a sip of water.  “We’ve been on these people for years,” Richter began.  “But recently we’ve had a bit of luck.  We’ve gotten closer to shutting them down completely and an animal, trapped and frightened, I’ve found, is often capable of unimaginable things.”

             
“Why did you keep your daughters kidnapping from the public?”

             
Leone stepped toward the screen, his feet dragging as if they weighed a hundred pounds.

             
“I truly believed that the agenda of this group was, as you say, to rebel against the corporate model, and that we could find a peaceful resolve to this situation without the need for bloodshed.”

             
Leone stood before the image, staring at it.  Watching as the man seemed to fight tears.  The boy’s fist whipped through the air and swiped the image of his father’s head.  There was nothing to strike and instead he spun on his heels and nearly fell.  He snatched the legs of an end table and swung that toward the holograph.  It crashed into the wall but his father was still there.  He cried out and lifted the table over his head, meaning to smash the device projecting the image but Quey snatched the table and pulled it from him.  The boy whirled on him and sent a fist into his face.  Quey ducked his chin and tucked his head against his shoulder as the boys knuckles found his cheek.

             
The boy stood in front of him, glaring and breathing heavily.  “Leone,” Quey began softly.

             
“Fuck you,” the boy snapped.  “This is your fault.  If you had just listened to her, gone with her, she wouldn’t have been there by herself.”  Quey stared at the boy.  He understood.  He took a step forward.

             
“I know,” he began.

             
“You don’t know shit,” the kid barked at him.  Then he shoved Quey and said, “Why don’t you just go plan who you want to get killed next.”

             
The words stung.  Quey stood silent as Leone stormed off down the hall.

             
On the holoscreen the reporter was back, sitting behind her desk with a picture of Reggie over her shoulder.  “…has been identified as Reginald Vann.  He’s a former decorated Blue Moon security agent who fought in the war on south continent.  Over the last few years he’s been living in a small town on the west coast but during the last year he’s been repeatedly spotted with this man,” Reggie vanished and an image of Quey captured on a security camera in one city or another appeared.  “He is a well known moonshiner that goes by the name Quey Von Zaul, and is now believed to be the leader of this terrorist cell.  Weather that is his real name or just an alias remains to be determined.”

             
“Quey has multiple arrests and ties to smuggling operations all over continent.  He is also known to have affiliations with the Angles of the Brood, the group responsible for the raids on over fifteen cities and countless towns over the last year.  Their relationship was made most notable by this video posted online.”

             
The video of the Brood burning down his ranch began to play.

             
“Screen off,” Quey said.

             
The room snapped into silence.

             
“I don’t get it,” Natalie said.  “What’s the play?”

             
“The play is they’ll be coming,” Quey said.  “That picture of Rain gave Richter Crow all the justification he needs and you better believe there’s good odds on that he has a video copy of the entire event.  If he does, it’ll be leaked online later today.  He’ll claim we did it.  Then he’ll send in the security forces and bury us under a hundred tons of rubble, us and all his dirty little secrets, and the people of Saffron’ll applaud him for it.”

             
“That can’t be,” Rachel said.

             
“No, he’s right,” Natalie interrupted.  “All you have to do is say terrorist and suddenly people don’t look to hard for the truth of things.  Plus he’s put it out there that we might be in bed with the brood.  Sure enough these raids’ll be on us as well before too long.”

             
“So what do we do?” Rachel wondered.

             
After a moment Quey asked, “Where’s Arnie?”

             
“Flight simulator,” Natalie replied with a shrug.

             
Quey nodded.  “Reggie sent a video.  It’s of Rain’s torture.  Someone has to watch it.”

             
He saw the disgust on Natalie and Rachel’s face.  “Why?” Rachel asked.

             
“We have to know what she said.  Anything they know we can’t use.”

             
Natalie and Rachel exchanged a glance.

             
“I can’t do it,” Quey admitted.  No one was volunteering.  “We’ll figure it out later,” he said.

             
“I can watch it,” Ryla offered from where she stood just inside the hallway leading toward the elevators.  Eyes looked to her with a bit of surprise.

             
Natalie went to her and asked, “How do you feel?”

             
“Tired.  Sore,” she replied.  She looked at Quey.  His eyes found her in a different way than they had before.  “She was my friend.”  There was sadness in her, he could see it, but not a single tear in her eyes.

             
“You shouldn’t be up.” Natalie said.

             
“I’m fine,” she replied.

             
“Of course she is,” Arnie said as he stumbled from the elevators toward the main room.  “She’s a robot.”

             
Ryla’s eyes widened and looked him.  He had a bottle of whiskey in his hand.

             
“Arnie,” Quey began.

             
Arnie looked hard at him, “Is it true?  What’s on the news?”

             
Quey nodded.  “The part you mean is.”

             
“And the little robot’s gunna watch it.  Must be nice.  Have a switch like that.”

             
“She’s not a robot,” Rachel defended.

             
“What is it then?” he asked, then added, “Can’t trust it,” before taking a long sip.

             
“You’re drunk,” Quey told him.

             
“Yup.  Don’t change that it’s got things.  That last basement.  Something big.  Think there’s other things below that.  It’s up to something.”

             
“You’re angry, I get it.  But whatever she might be… doesn’t change what happened to Rain,” he said and Arnie looked at him.

             
“Sure,” he said with a shrug.  “Why not.  Put it in a dress and fuck it all you want.”

             
Quey stepped forward.

             
“Least your girlfriend won’t die,” the man finished and then he began to blubber.  When he lifted the bottle to his lips Quey took it and said, “Quite enough of that I think.”

             
Arnie looked at him.  “Did you see her?  What they did?”

             
Quey nodded.

             
“How?  How does a person end up like that?”  Arnie’s legs gave out and he dropped to the floor with a thick thud.  Then he began to sob.

             
Natalie went to him, knelt beside him and put an arm around him.  Arnie sank against her and sobbed, drooling down the front of her shirt.  “It’s alright,” Natalie said when Arnie noticed it.  “I’m a mother, I’ve seen worse.

             
Quey turned and handed Ryla his sheet.  She took it and he didn’t look at her as he walked away.

             
Ryla watched the video while sitting on her bed.  She watched the first day, the beating and the rape.  She scanned through the footage as her friend lie on the cold metal table, naked and weeping.  The next day he strapped her down and pinched and pierced tender bits of flesh.  By evening things turned truly brutal, introducing fire into the mix.  That’s also when he began pressing the questions.

             
“What did you send them?” seemed to be a common one.

             
“A picture of your tiny dick,” She told him once.  He’d laughed.  “Does it make you feel good?  Powerful?  That why you hurt women, because they won’t give it to you on their own, so you take it.”

             
Sticklan seemed to grow pensive at that.  His reply was gentle.  “Its not about sex.  Matter of fact, when it comes to rape… you’re my first.”

             
“Why then?” she’d asked.  “What makes me special?”

             
He touched her tenderly, caressed a bit of flesh that was yet unmarked above her belly and below her breasts.  “I don’t know.  Maybe because it should have happened so many times but you fought hard to never let it.  Maybe because it’s the one thing Richter Crow asked me never to do.”  He leaned in and kissed her gently on the mouth, she struggled and tried to pull away, but he grabbed her by the hair and forced her head still.  “Maybe because of the way you handle him, and the world.  There’s a fire in you and it makes you the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.  And that makes me hate you in a very deep and special way.”

             
“You’re psychotic.”

             
“Maybe because you throw it around like its swag at a fancy party, you hold it out as an offer to control men, to get in their heads and force their hands, but not with me.  With me if I want it I take it and you are the one that’s weak and powerless.”

             
“That’s not true.  I don’t do that.”

             
“Isn’t it?  How many men have hidden you, helped you slip away, given you money or goods?  How many did it without at least believing they would get to shoot one off inside you?  And how many had?  Hell, why do you think the moonshiner’s willing to fight a fucking war for you?  They’re all going to die because he couldn’t stop thinking about your cunt.”

             
Sticklan Stone moved away from her, to someplace off camera.  When he returned he had a scalpel.  “You disserve this,” he told her.

             
That was when he cut into her.  He left her overnight, crying herself to sleep.  The next morning he came early and poured the bucket of maggots over her naked body.  Ryla scanned the footage, watching as her friend struggled against her shackles, trying to reach her wounds, to pick free the creatures slithering inside and burrowing under her skin.

             
More questions came, but the answers were always nonsense or confrontational.  As he worked on her and as her condition deteriorated she began resorting simply to, “Fuck you.”

             
Ryla watched.  After the bugs came the water boarding, the burning, this time it was a rod with a round end that glowed red, and the slow bending of fingers and toes until finally they snapped.  A hammer came, and then fire again.  He’d leave from time to time, giving her time to think and recover some of her senses.

             
Rain said little until the end.  Sticklan unlatched her and it was clear she knew this time he’d come to kill her.  She could barely stand and pain shot through her as she backed away from him.  “One last thing,” she said.  “A request.”

             
Sticklan laughed.  “This I’ve got to hear.”

             
Rain looked hard at him.  “Kill him.”

             
“What?” Stone’s voice changed.  It was serious.