Recap for Chapter 19
The sun rose over the plains below us to our right. I watched, spaced out on it for a minute through the jet’s wide window. The black robot had grabbed Francesca and the flying wing had settled over it, further scattering the bodies around us, latched onto the robot, and taken flight. Methyl and I sat on low couches in the antibiotic whites of a small medical unit. She was shoveling ramen from a bowl a service bot had brought for us both. I briefly spaced out on that sight, too.
I said to the black robot over the air, “Let me ask two somethings.”
Yes
“Why did you let them get that close?”
You had two bag traps. That creates a challenge in locating you. I removed the mind trap after liftoff.
“Steady as she goes. Also, are victims always assholes?”
Victims may sometimes endanger themselves and the rest of the crew, but personalities—
“With their flammable bodies?” Methyl said.
You are remarkably flammable
“How do you know?”
Your odor, miss
“It’s her perfume,” I said.
Methyl ethyl ketone confirms her volatility
I sniffed the air.
“Magic markers. So what?”
“No,” Methyl said. “No, or I’m out.”
I mouthed to her, Out how?
Magic markers and nail polish remover, paint thinners, and so on. A sharp, sweet odor
“It’s sharp,” I agreed.
“No, no, no,” Methyl said.
“But also, sweet.”
“No!”
It is a marker, as you say. We are taking all precautions
I was momentarily surprised by the bot’s abilities. It had been briefed unto shit about us, but the “marker/marker” match was well above average for a rescue drone. Its empathy was beside the point. You don’t screen for that if you’re sane.
“Precautions against my smell?”
Against the acetone in your body—
“To protect your next million birthdays, Methyl.”
“Just take precautions against the next million maniacs attacking us,” Methyl said. “When does all this fun stop trying to kill me?”
This is the correct fun
“Do you want to go back to living behind the Golden Apple?” To the bot I said, “What’s Francesca’s status?”
I’d heard nothing from her since the riverbank.
Disentangling
“What are her chances?”
Her chances of what, Richard
“Survival?”
One hundred percent. This is not a chop shop
“Was that a line from your boss’s dialogue tree? When do we get to talk to him?”
Disentangling
“Does the name Xavier Gregor tingle something inside you?”
Disentangling
“Say disentangling again,” Methyl said.
I turned to her and pointed through a window.
“The sun is that way.”
“And?”
“It tells us where we are headed, Methyl. You’re interested in that, yeah?”
I’d no idea from where my biting sarcasm had come, but there was more waiting behind it, no matter how stupid it was to be like this with someone who’d abandoned her tent to follow me without a backward glance.
“I’m less interested in where I am than when I am,” Methyl said.
She was right. I could have browsed the luggage store, or she could have stood at the wall all our lives minus one second and been different people forever, not been wondering which direction we were flying after fighting in the e-waste pits, spitting fire and me, I guess being cool jeans in the middle of a crisis. Always a crisis of my making.
Of Xavier’s making. What was I allowing my thinking to do? Who’d scooped us up and taken us on this trajectory that I could use only the Sun to decipher?
“Bitch,” I muttered.
“Not to me,” Methyl said.
“Xavier. I know what’s up. We’re headed to that failed expansion of the LIGO net in British Columbia. He must have slapped it together. Very him to do that. God knows what else he has at his hotel.”
“His what?”
“Headquarters. The call sign is Hotel Quebec,” I raised my voice a little. “We’re going to Canada, right, Jarhead?”
That’s our destination. HQ contains a rehab center where your car will be fixed
“Maybe he liked how the call sign matched up with a city in a bordering country.”
There were votes online. Canada won one time
“Concussion bot, please.”
ETA in two hours
“Eat,” I said to Methyl. “Never stop eating.”
“You’re being weird. Where’s my lighter?”
“You’re fifteen. I’m not arming you at 35,000 feet.”
“That would be unsafe.”
We turned at once to what had been a bland bulkhead but was now a screen into a den of sorts, dimly lit. Xavier, apparently alone, sat on a brown leather couch beneath dark curtains that kept out the sunlight except for a knife of light that crossed his left shoulder.
“You’re at 70,000 feet. Things are moving somewhat quickly, so we needed both of you super-sonic and high as possible. Bad choice of words. We do not need you running away to get high again, please.”
“If you can’t deal with bag traps—”
“Methyl,” I said. “Let’s hear him out. His hotel might have a pool.”
“We dealt with them, Sophia. But you were more than any of us could have imagined.”
“Methyl.”
I could only look between the screen and Methyl. She was Sophia. In her eyes it was clear.
“Methyl,” I said.
“Methyl surprised everyone with her bravery, and when she blew out our infrareds, we all went a little wild up here.”
“Good TV?”
“Great TV. But nothing compared to what Gabby scanned of your back, Rich, some of which leaked because a car who shall remain nameless until we wake her up hacked a bit of it and got trapped, twice. So, some of that’s everywhere now. Do you think those e-waste people were risking their lives for a car? They wanted you. People know who you really are now.”
“Good, then someone can tell me.”
Xavier’s screen split in two vertically. On a blue background next to him I lay on the desk in the Hacienda on my stomach, mouth-breathing, helpless. A faint violet light turned on and illuminated a white figure like a glowing tattoo on my back below the surface of my skin. It was shaped like a moth with elongated wings that reached across my shoulders and around my upper arms. The wings looked shredded, like a late autumn leaf.
Methyl snapped her fingers.
“That’s inside me?”
“We’ve read five, ten percent beyond what was leaked. Naughty car. Rich, we’ve been finding people like you for the last seven years, and the number has been increasing. Not enough to make major news because nothing ever makes it on camera, as you know, the events wipe out all recordings. It gets moved to News of the Weird pretty quick. Very low definition, every time. Even though people are literally getting microchipped in the process, most don’t know it, don’t know what to look for, but they’ve been changed.”
The screen returned completely to Xavier’s shot. My stomach unclenched. I didn’t know I’d been locked, every muscle, in a knot, until the shot of my back disappeared.
“We believe you’re the only one who is complete. Every other specimen, other recipient of the implant, has gotten something small, a glancing blow, you know? Whatever this process is, it hasn’t been accurate. But you. You got the full deal. That’s what was obvious from the leak. You’re not worth billions, you’re somewhere in the neighborhood of approximately maybe the best chance humans have to survive whatever’s coming.”
“And what’s coming?” Methyl said.
Xavier shrugged and pointed at me through the screen.
“So far, this has come,” he said.
To be continued