Chapter Forty-Two

 

We have to get to Minda’s set before they start melting chocolate.

“What is your plan when we get tere?” Tyson scratches at his shoulder, keeping his other hand firmly on the wheel. I wish he would keep both hands on the wheel. We are going pretty fast.

“I’m going to ask you not to tell anyone the chocolate’s poisoned, por favor.”

“Bo, tat’s–”

“Just hear me out. These brain parasites want people to stop eating chocolate. Which everyone will do if they know a batch got poisoned. Which gives time for the number of infected people to multiply exponentially by the time we rescue Kayla.” I know the mindworms would still need a lab. Pero, I’m appealing to Tyson’s emotions. “Which you promised Kaliel you would do.”

Tyson shows me his fangs. It’s body language without human equivalent, and I’m not sure what it means. He looks back at the road before he closes his mouth.

“What’s the Earth saying, in for a penny, in for a pound, eh Tyson?” Brill grins.

“Do you even know what tat refers to?” Tyson asks.

“It’s about one of the card games they play for money. The psychology that makes it easier to stay in once some of your money is committed.” Brill doesn’t sound sure, though. After all, Krom don’t gamble.

“Actually, it has to do with obsolete Eart law. Once you got behind and owed a single penny, you might as well borrow a whole pound, because te penalty for nonpayment was te same.” Tyson turns towards the set. “If someone gets hurt here, tere will be consequences. For all of us.”

I point out the windshield. “We have to destroy the chocolate – and make it look like an accident.”

“What are you pointing at?” Tyson squints into the distance.

“That’s Minda’s set. The storeroom is on the left. If we were to crash into it, and if this tanker full of sugar syrup were to spring a leak, it would all be ruined.” Tyson looks hesitant, so I add, “Brill already bought the syrup, and I’ll pay for the truck and the damages.”

“How do we know tere’s not anybody in tere?”

“There probably won’t be. Ni idea how to make sure. Too bad we don’t have a Zantite here to use his x-ray vision.” It’s a joke. The Zantite augmented heat-based vision isn’t strong enough to see through metal – or I wouldn’t be here. I hid from them twice aboard one of their own warships. Claro está, I didn’t realize that they even had heat vision then.

“But these might be.” Brill pulls out the goggles Fizzax gave him. “Some of the other settings are stronger.” He puts the goggles on and adjusts them. “I can see a ton of heat signatures off to the right. There’s one on the left. But it’s moving back out of the way.”

“I want to see,” I say.

“Later, Babe.” Brill takes off the goggles and slips them into my bag.

“All right ten.” Tyson opens his mouth and shows his fangs to the road. We’re pushing his moral boundaries to the edge here. I hope it doesn’t break him.

“Brace yourself, Babe. This thing doesn’t have airbags.”

Tyson floors it. We cross the last stretch of road. The engine roars. The storeroom wall is getting closer.

We crash into it, through it, the impact pulling tight on the seatbelt Brill and I are sharing, metal crushing in around us.

Two tons worth of chocolate spills out of broken boxes with the HGB logo crossed out on them, some of the bricks bursting out of their wrappers, a few others flying through the windshield.

Glass shatters.

I duck as a block of HGB Dark comes flying at mi cabeza.

I look over at Brill, afraid he might be bleeding again, pero the body armor seems to have done its job protecting his arm and shoulder. We pile out, not having to fake looking shocked as people rush towards us.

We don’t even have to rip open the truck’s tank. A strong piece of rebar did that for us, raking a hole down the side. Phosphorescent sugar syrup is leaking all over the boxes, coating the chocopoison. If this mess is going down the drain – if that drain is even anything other than decorative – it’s moving slowly.

Tyson looks down distastefully as chocolaty sugar syrup coats his boots and the cuffs of his pants. He heads to the ledge at the pool’s edge, to walk around the mess, rather than through it.

Frank is one of the first people to make it over to us. He looks worried when he sees me tottering through the mess. Pero the look he gives me when he sees Brill standing next to me – a mix of disappointment, frustration and frío determination – sinks me to my core.

Without him having to say it, I can tell his orders have changed. He’s a reluctant assassin, evaluating his target’s troublesome girlfriend.

I’m guessing Frank was hoping Brill had dropped off his radar, and he wouldn’t try real hard to find him, because if he can’t find him, he can’t end him, nunca. And here we are, making a scene too public to ignore.

No y no. Tawny said if we kept our mouths shut, HGB would forget about mi vida. She said the megacorp wouldn’t even have to know how much Brill knows.

I don’t think she lied.

I think she underestimated the ruthlessness of her own company. There must have been something in the feedcasts Tawny’s been sending of our exploits that gave HGB a red flag, or maybe they just want to sever my connection with Krom, now that the rest of their media-spin isn’t going well.

And now they want Frank to kill Brill so that he’s no threat to their secrets – and so that they can keep me in line.

A small noise escapes my throat. Frank starts to say something, pero Tyson and Brill push past him, onto the set. Tyson scratches his back again, against a corner of the fake wall, before heading farther in to look for Mertex. The doomed Zantite has to be here, somewhere.

Mamá is standing there, staring, holding a box of HGB dark. I gesture her towards me, urgently. She brings the box, gracias a Dios.

I tell her, “Pretend to trip and drop it in the goo.”

She raises both eyebrows at me. “Oh no! This is too slippery, mija!” She throws the box. It lands with a plop in the rising sugar syrup. Frank and Mamá and I, we’re all covered with phosphorescence. It’s beautiful.

I hold my hands up, and Mamá holds up hers, and it’s like I’m a niña again, and we’re making holopaintings in the park. She’s always loved a piece of art called Starry Night, loved to mimic little pieces of it, and right now it looks like we’ve fallen into it. I make eye contact with Frank, and his expression is soft, looking at the glow with a child’s wonder. For a moment, it feels like he could fit, a star in my constellation.

“The chocolate was all poisoned,” I say. “But don’t tell anybody.”

Frank scoops up a handful of glowing syrup. He empties the syrup, holds out a glowing hand. “Come home, Bo.” I don’t think he means it literally. “HGB will welcome you as a hero. We need people as resourceful as you to keep Earth safe, and it would be so much easier if we weren’t working at cross purposes.”

It’s a beautiful image, healing the crack between me and my planet, bringing in a generation of peace.

Pero, then I remember the look he gave me about Brill. HGB is bloodthirsty, and even from the inside, I wouldn’t be able to change that. Frank has more blood on his hands than phosphorescence, and I don’t want any of his guilt on mine. “HGB is poison too, viejo.”

Frank looks at the residue on his hand. “You are oversimplifying things again.”

I turn away from him. “Mamá, por favor. Is there any more of this chocolate out there?”

“The show does not start for another half an hour. We have barely started prepping.” She looks rattled, though whether from finding out she’s standing in a lake of poisoned chocolate, or because of what Frank and I just said to each other, I can’t tell.

“Oh, gracias a Dios!” I hug mi mamá close. She returns the embrace, weakly. “If you see anyone eating chocolate in here, take it away from them, OK?”

I look past her at Minda, still working to set up, while casting worried glances over this way. Dozens of audience members in the waiting area are looking our way too, pero the security guys won’t let them down past the stands.

Brill and Tyson are crossing the room, peering into corners, and the security guys are looking nervously at them, until Fizzax says something that seems to calm them.

There’s a flash of movement back behind the staging area. I motion to Frank, then bring a finger to my lips, careful not to touch my mouth with the tainted goo. He follows me, and I sense more than see someone moving from the back out into the hall, towards the exit door. Someone big enough to be Mertex. Frank pulls me to a stop, moves to check it out.

Frank on a regular day versus a Zantite hopped up on IH. I don’t want to see either of them get hurt, and I’m honestly not sure which one I should be more afraid for.

The exit door bangs open, and Frank’s moving fast. I follow.

When we hit the alley, Mertex hasn’t gone far. He’s crouched with his head in his hands, groaning. At first I think the IH has already run its course. Then I realize the miscalculation the Mindhuggers made. Well before the IH kills Mertex, it’s poisoning his parasite. And unlike whatever quick fix the Evevrons gave Kaliel, this is unpleasant for both Murry and the thing in his cabeza.

“Atento,” I tell Frank. Careful. “He’s had a dose of the Invincible Heart.”

“Poor kek.” Frank draws his weapon, a grim frown on his face.

“Stop,” I grab for his gun arm. I never would have dared to do that before. Frank draws back before I can make contact.

I’m half-afraid he’s going to turn that gun on me, pero he looks at me quizzically, somehow still keeping an eye on Mertex. “He’s dangerous, he’s dying, and he’s obviously in pain. Putting him down would be a kindness.”

“He’s not a dog, Frank.” I’ve seen him show more actual kindness to that stupid corgi. “And none of this is his fault. Besides, I need to talk to him.”

I step closer to Mertex. Stooped down as he is, he’s almost my same height. He looks at me. “You were right, Bodacious Benitez. There’s a lot here that should have been saved.”

I suck air. How does he even know I said that? Was there some kind of transmitter in the car? Or could the Mindhugger have had someone in that field, listening?

It sounds like I’m talking directly to the Mindhugger again, no? I shouldn’t be. The IH wasn’t supposed to fry Mertex’s brain. “What do you mean, mijo?”

Mertex blinks those hunormous whale eyes. “Didn’t you say that to me? I thought… but I can’t remember when.”

So Murry, then. Pero the mindworm’s still there. “Mijo, I need to know where Kayla is.”

He bares his teeth and grumbles deep in his throat, and I have to stop myself from flitdashing. I still feel an urgent need to pee. The irritability brought on by the drug growls in his voice when he says, “Why would I know that?”

I swallow hard. “Because I can tell you’re going to be really good at guessing today. If you were going to hide Kayla somewhere, where would it be?”

He groans and clutches his cabeza again. Pero when he opens his eyes again, he says, “It would have to be across the teeth, on the far island. Somewhere deep.”

“Deep?” I ask. “What does that mean?”

He grits his teeth, looking irritated again. “I don’t know. Just deep.”

And that’s all I’m going to get. Frank clears his throat. I almost forgot he was there.

“You are going to explain all of this to me later.” It’s not a question.

“Sí, viejo.” I’ll gladly tell Frank anything he wants to know, keep him talking long enough for Brill to flitdash. I️ hope mi vida understood Frank’s expression. I️ hope he’s already gone. “Murry, mijo, por favor. Is the game over, now that we destroyed the Pure Chocolate?”

“It would have been the perfect form of irony, wouldn’t it? He thought of it a long time ago, back when the troublesome couple took off ready to spread their theobromine poison across the galaxy. Only, it took too much tainted chocolate to kill an Earthling. So he added a catalyst to the dairy they were supposed to use today to magnify the effect. It would have been almost instant, almost painless.”

Troublesome couple? It takes me a couple of seconds to put that together with the missing boxes of Pure Chocolate that had somehow found their way aboard the CaptureVista, the SeniorLeisure vessel Kaliel had been tricked into scuttlepunching.

It had been an unnecessary double-whammy, so if HGB sent the black ship, they wouldn’t have been behind it. Chestla had never found leads on who was.

“The mindworms tried to poison the Bakers?” Kayla’s poor grandparents never had a chance. “Pero, it didn’t work, because somebody else blew them up first.”

“It had started working.” Mertex looks at his shoes. “There were several cases of illness among the staff, and one death. Plus a visiting Zantite dignitary, who died almost instantly. Zantites are surprisingly susceptible to Pure275.”

Which is interesting, because the Zantites and the Evevrons – who created Pure275 – have a history of war.

“Pero, now. This game. Is it over? Did I pass the test?”

“You won major points. But there’s one more piece of irony left. The people you care about are the ones saying the show must go on, even after Kaliel disrupted it. Even after you destroyed the chocolate.”

That means Mamá and Minda. I look back at the closed exit door. My heart sinks.

“Murry, what did you do?”

“I–” He collapses, writhing on the pavement. Then he goes still and lets out a long sigh, like some excruciating pain has been released. Pero, then his eyes fill with horror, and he looks up at me. “What have I done?”

He’s on his feet, pushing past us back into the building.

Frank looks alarmed. “You really don’t think I should shoot him?”

I follow Mertex, calling back over my shoulder. “He’s back on our side.” It takes me a second to realize what I just said. As long as Frank’s supposed to hurt Brill, we’ll never be on the same side. Pero we both want to protect Mamá, and in this moment, that’s enough.