In Tabula Ra$a, only a handful of buildings were more than twenty years old and the vast majority had been built within the last decade. In a city in which everything is shiny and new, the hot fad was to build old.
The estate Zoey lived in, for instance, was reconstructed out of components recovered from a mansion built in 1935, transported across the country and reassembled brick by brick. Likewise, the trendy boutiques and bars selling everything from vintage clothes to hallucinogenic muffins in West Hills were often designed to look like old structures that had been renovated and gentrified. There was a candied gnocchi shop run out of a building that appeared to have once been an old-time service station that had in fact been built from scratch to look like that, complete with a new sign mounted on top of an artificially old and weathered one. Next door was a bar designed to look like it had once been a bank, including an antique vault door leading to the kitchen. The most prominent building was a decrepit granary whose roof had been partially collapsed when the neighboring silo had fallen on top of it—both structures having been in exactly that position from the design stage. It was a dance club.
None of these buildings, however, offered a strong, flat surface for the helicopter to land upon. The thing weighed eight tons, Echo noted, and would collapse most rooftops. More importantly, there was also no way for their stealth aircraft to remain stealthy as it landed. West Hills was bustling with activity (it was, in fact, along the parade route) and even the drunkest of shoppers would notice a giant semi-invisible machine chopping up the night air above them.
But, where their pursuers would be alerted by trending Blink streams about a black stealth helicopter skulking through the night, they would presumably have no reason to note the appearance of something that was, say, the opposite of that. Thus, as part of the preparations before they’d left, Andre had downloaded an alternate “disguise” for the aircraft that would let them blend rather than disappear. Echo scrolled through menus and punched it in. Instantly, the helicopter’s programmable skin transformed from a night sky transparency into a bright pink wash of bouncy letters and animated women’s breasts. Flashing and scrolling all around the aircraft were the words:
TITTYCOPTER
AERIAL NUDE PARTY BUS
NIGHTLY LAS VEGAS TO TABULA RA$A TOURS
BOOK NOW!!!
Dance music blasted from speakers and swirling spotlights flashed across the streets and structures below.
In the rear storage area, where in the stock version of this aircraft a Special Forces unit would have stowed their various soldiering supplies, was a second set of costumes (the original plan had required them to change at least once in the process of getting away). Andre had been tasked with finding the backup outfits and it was clear they were last-minute rentals, a bundle of seven themed costumes from the popular children’s franchise Raja’s Entourage. The five of them quickly distributed and pulled on the costumes, Zoey and Echo changing in the little storage closet.
Zoey would be dressed as Bonnie the Bonobo, Echo would be Lumpy Ninja, Wu was ShitShark, and Will was Professor Cheeselog. The hostage, Marti, was forced to take the costume of Bald Sasquatch. Andre and Budd, had they been there, would have gone as Pizzabot and his imaginary friend, Fudgefiddle. Even though the show was called Raja’s Entourage, there was no Raja costume, as the character had never actually appeared in the show. Every episode was about the entourage trying to frantically cover for Raja’s absence from that week’s adventure, a running joke being the increasingly absurd ways in which they described the absent character and his actions once they were inevitably asked, “Where’s Raja?”
They each grabbed a bottle from the wet bar, to play the role of drunks in search of a Devil’s Night party. It turned out one of the clubs at the periphery of West Hills had a rooftop bar (the entire structure built to look like a huge cosmopolitan glass), so the gaudy party copter hovered overhead and they all climbed down the ladder into the mass of shocked revelers below, the winds from the rotors blowing off wigs and spilling drinks. It was exactly the kind of obnoxious stunt that drunk tourists would pull on a night like this, so it was perfect for what they were trying to accomplish: none of their enemies would see that incident scroll across Blink and say, “That sounds exactly like the kind of thing Will Blackwater would do.”
They headed downstairs, then out through the club. Once on the sidewalk, Zoey watched the helicopter take off on autopilot, leaving her feeling stranded. She adjusted her mask. It was kind of hard to see out of it, which she thought could be a problem in an emergency. She was carrying the crate with the knockoff Stench Machine inside, she hadn’t wanted to leave him alone on the helicopter—she imagined him jumping up on the control console and crashing it into a skyscraper.
“So it’s just going to wander around the sky until we need it?” asked Zoey. “How long until it runs out of gas?”
Echo checked something on her phone. “Uh … it’s not gas that’s the issue, it’s that it’s saying it has to be back to its owner by midnight? It says another customer needs it.”
That got Will’s attention. “Are you serious?”
“Well, it is a rental…”
They paused their conversation as a loud group of tourists passed.
Zoey said, “We just have to call the guy and have him extend it or whatever. I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”
Echo shook her head. “Nobody knows who Andre’s guy is. He gets mad when you ask.”
“Oh my god. Okay.” Zoey turned to Marti, his face completely hidden behind the rubber Bald Sasquatch mask. “So where are we going? Time is short, for a whole bunch of stupid reasons.”
“Across the street, three buildings down.”
Zoey counted the buildings and found one that had been built to look like a 1950s-era storefront business with a second floor that no doubt would, at least back then, have served as an apartment for the owner. Even the brick had been made to look like it’d been painted a dozen times over the decades, as various businesses came and went. A hand-painted shingle hung from a horizontal pole that said:
PENNYFEATHER AND SONS
FUNERAL SERVICES
… which left Zoey more confused than ever.
They shuffled in that direction, past pedestrians, no one paying them any particular attention. Zoey’s costume was a furry gray monkey wearing a pink bikini, her face completely covered by the mask of Bonnie the Bonobo. Wu’s ShitShark costume was designed so that the eye holes were in the mouth of the brown shark, and she wondered how well he’d be able to see in the event of a fight. A sophisticated enough system could surely make them in their costumes, there was probably software that could spot a person by the way their heels lifted off the pavement when they walked. But they just had to make it about a hundred feet down the sidewalk, through a dense crowd of drunken people with a million other things to look at. It wouldn’t even be a minute of walking. Surely they could make it that far without being spotted.
Surely.
As they walked, Echo pointed and said, “You know what’s three blocks in that direction? Fort Fortuna. Where…”
She trailed off, as there were bystanders who could maybe overhear their conversation. She didn’t need to finish—that was where Dexter Tilley’s body had been found. Zoey, however, had no clue what exactly it meant.
They arrived at the funeral home to find it wasn’t open. It was, of course, creeping up on midnight. There were lights on upstairs, though. Will knocked, then knocked again, forcefully. Nothing.
Will said to seemingly no one, “I know you’ve got a camera out here. I’m giving you one minute to get down here and open the door, or we’re blowing the lock.” He glanced back at the nearest group of drunk girls on the sidewalk and said, more quietly, “This is about Dexter Tilley.”
Seconds before the one-minute deadline expired, the door was opened by an old man with the kind of face that probably left him few career options outside the death industry.
The creepy man said, “You could have just told me it was you, rather than playing the barbarians at the gates. Come inside before you attract any more attention.”
Considering Will was in disguise, Zoey wasn’t sure who the “you” was that the funeral guy was saying he’d open the door for. Did he recognize Will behind Professor Cheeselog’s flashing glasses and beak? She half expected that once inside, he’d say, “My door is always open for Raja! Wait, where is he?”
Once inside, the man, who Zoey assumed was the Pennyfeather in Pennyfeather and Sons, said, “Now, how can I help you?”
“They’re here to ask about Dexter Tilley,” said Marti. “Same as he, uh, yelled at the door.”
“I of course cannot disclose any information about customers or potential customers—”
Will stopped him. “There isn’t time for that. This city is about to go to war over this.”
“A privacy guarantee that dissolves under duress is no guarantee at all.”
Marti pointed and said, “It’s over here.”
Without further explanation, he walked toward a wall display showing off various styles and finishes of caskets.
“There’s a hidden door. How do you open it?”
The creepy man made no move to help. Will just stared at him. After several seconds under his gaze, the man sighed and pressed his hand to a spot on the wall and the casket display slid open. Behind it was a steel door, with a separate security system.
Zoey sighed and said, “Okay, what is this place, really? Do I need to prepare myself for what I’m going to see behind the armored secret door?”
Marti said, “You’ll see.”
“Is it cannibalism? A cannibalism cult? Or are you doing mad scientist experiments on cadavers? Or on people who weren’t cadavers until you started doing experiments on them?”
Instead of answering, the creepy man opened the steel door with a voice command.
“Is it a torture chamber?” asked Zoey. “Ritualistic sacrifice? Corpse reanimation chamber?”
The door opened to reveal stairs. Wu went down first, as was his habit. Then everyone else shuffled past Zoey, as she stood aside and prompted them to pass. Echo was last to go down, but Zoey stopped her.
“Is the countdown still on?”
Echo showed Zoey her phone. A countdown was displayed, ten minutes left.
“This is The Blowback feed. Whether it’s real or just a bluff…” Echo shrugged.
“Okay.” Zoey breathed. “When they go live with this, it’s your job to stop me from watching it. I don’t want to see what they do to him, I’m not going to give them that. I need you to do that, okay? Because I’m going to try to watch it, I know I will, and you have to stop me.”
“Got it.”
Zoey followed everyone downstairs and found them standing in a spacious, comfy-looking lounge. There were expensive overstuffed leather sofas facing a few top-of-the-line recliners that were parked in the middle of the floor, huge monitors in every direction. A door was standing open on the opposite wall and through it was visible a bedroom that was probably fancier than any in Zoey’s own estate. There was a massive circular bed, chairs, and racks of … devices. A sex room.
“That’s the secret? The undertaker’s got himself a sweet bone chamber under his mortuary?”
Marti said, “Through there.”
He wasn’t heading for the sex room. It turned out there was another door, to their left. This one was locked and, once more, required the creepy man to access it.
The door clicked open, and when Zoey saw what was inside, she went cold.