Marti leaned over to see and said, “Isn’t that your cat?”
“Is that really him?” gasped Zoey. “Oh my god, how did you do it? Oh my god…”
“I was preparing a late dinner for myself,” said Carlton, “a nice piece of trout. He must have gotten hungry. Came out and hopped onto the counter.”
“Where in the hell had he been?”
“I of course do not know.”
“Why was he hiding this whole time? Why wouldn’t he come out before, when we were looking for him?”
“Of course I cannot know that, either, but I would daresay that your cat may be something of an asshole.”
Zoey felt a relief so profound that she was almost floating. It didn’t last.
“Wait, so, this was all for nothing? Everything we did?”
Wu said, “We should be thinking in terms of extraction right now. How far out is the helicopter?”
Echo checked. “Two minutes.”
Zoey motioned to Marti. “All right. Go home to your dick father. I don’t care.”
Will said, “That’s the wrong move.”
“We’re not making moves anymore, Will. Our moves just make things worse. If they really do have Budd and Andre, we’ll work something out. Maybe he’ll see this as a show of goodwill. No capital W there.”
Echo said, “Just to confirm, it does appear that every available Vanguard of Peace vehicle and operative in the city has been rerouted to this location.”
“Right. Let’s get out of here.” Zoey nudged the stray cat back into his crate and headed up the stairs.
“This isn’t complicated,” said Will from behind her. “Chobb has to strike back whether we give back his son or not. The transgression has already occurred and has become public.”
“So?”
“So, an army is closing in on us and if they know Marti is on board the helicopter they won’t shoot it down.”
“Well, then you’d better come up with some other way to keep them from doing that.”
They all emerged onto a sidewalk and were greeted by a solid wall of human backs, most in some kind of costume. The crowd was now packed along the street, waiting for the Black Parade.
“How far out did you say the helicopter was?”
Echo was on her phone, with an expression Zoey immediately hated.
“Okay, what now?”
“Well, this isn’t good.”
“What?”
“It’s not coming. It’s, uh, returning to its owner. The rental period ran out and nobody paid for an extension.”
Will clenched his jaw and muttered, “If Andre is still alive, I’m going to kill him.”
Zoey, still staring at the sky, said, “What do we do?”
Will studied his surroundings, trying to think up options. He didn’t look like he was succeeding.
“I think they’re going to take us. Chobb’s people. I don’t see any way around it.”
“That’s not an option,” said Zoey. “Maybe it is for you, but it isn’t for me. Not for Echo, either. If you don’t understand why, you haven’t been paying attention.”
Wu said, “If I need to extract Zoey apart from the rest of this group, then that’s what I will do. So if you don’t have a plan, then we will be on our way.”
It was getting hard to hear him—a blast of thumping party music was approaching from Zoey’s left. A small vehicle that looked like a glass capsule on wheels was rolling down the street. A scrolling message was flashing around the exterior, advertising the services of a booze misting pod. For a few hundred bucks you and half a dozen friends could sit in one and get a rolling tour of the city while slowly getting drunk breathing alcohol vapor.
This one veered off the road and the crowd parted as it bumped up onto the sidewalk, drunken people cursing it every step of the way. It rolled to a stop and the glass bubble opened, separating and rising like the sections of an orange. Sitting there, in white overalls that looked kind of like biohazard suits, were Budd and Andre.
Andre said, “Get on!”
They all started climbing aboard, leaving Marti behind, standing next to the crypt keeper by the front door.
Zoey turned to him. “Tell your dad I said hi. Hope the liver works out for you.”
Andre pushed a lever and the segments of the glass bubble descended and sealed them off. The noise of the crowd outside was instantly muted as the cart rolled back onto the street. Andre and Budd both stank so badly of smoke that it stung Zoey’s nostrils.
“We, uh, own this now,” said Andre. “Only transportation we could come up with that could accommodate everybody under the circumstances. We tracked the chopper here, but I don’t get a signal now…”
Will said, “Your buddy recalled it because the rental expired.”
“Ah, right. Damn. Yeah, I got tied up due to events at the Screw.” He gestured to the cat crate in Zoey’s lap. “Is that Stench Machine?”
Zoey said, “No, it’s a long story. What the hell happened back there?”
“So,” began Budd, “it turned out the Rhodes Scholar residents of the Screw had stored some propane canisters behind that electrical box. After it overloaded, they ignited. It fried the drone, which happened to be right there, because that’s our luck. Also set that side of the building aflame. So we felt compelled to go to the grounds ourselves to help evacuate the building. Think everybody got out okay, I know some got taken to the hospital on account of the smoke. Andre got some burns on his back from a piece of hot railing that fell on him. We’ve both been coughing up black mucus. Anyway, it gave us a close view of everyone who passed. See what they were carrying, in terms of critters.”
Andre said, “But then another truck came along, heading toward the grasshopper factory, and I guess the VOP guys thought it was another attack. Fired a projectile intended to short out the motor. It should have just rolled to a stop, but instead the battery ruptured and the thing turned into a flaming wreck. It tumbled over and spilled its cargo, which was several hundred thousand bugs.”
“This,” continued Budd, “created something of a stampede in the crowd, and the rumor that this was all an act of sabotage, which it kind of was and kind of wasn’t. We obviously were not tryin’ to burn the building down.”
Zoey said, “Well they surely knew we’d remotely hijacked the pee truck, it’d have been too much of a coincidence that the accident happened right when they were preparing to do their big Devil’s Night feast.”
Andre seemed mildly insulted. “We did no such thing. That would have been obvious. No, the truck was driven by a human, lots of trucks still are. Budd just paid the driver to get drunk off his ass and do the wreck. Guy had stumbled out slurring about how he steered to miss an armadillo in the road. Remember, the original plan was to come and go without them ever knowing we’d been there at all.”
Zoey said, “Yeah, I guess that was a better plan.”
“Not really,” said Budd. “Melvin—that’s the driver—spilled the beans to the VOP just minutes later. Told them everything, pointed us out while we were still tryin’ to help people out of the building. We wound up getting chased through the fire and the crowd and the smoke and the plague of grasshoppers. Eventually got hit with stun sticks and put on board a transport to their headquarters. But lucky for us, and I’d say this was the only time luck smiled on us all night, Kowalski had been listening in on their radio chatter and made to intercept the vehicle. This resulted in something of a shootout between their security team and ours. I got grazed in the thigh and one of Kowalski’s vehicles got blowed up. But long story short, we managed to get away in the end.”
Andre said, “I don’t know if you heard my last message but you’ve probably deduced that neither of us have got your cat in one of our pockets.”
Zoey waved a hand. “Oh, it turned out Stench Machine was back at the house the whole time. Carlton found him.”
Andre and Budd stared at Zoey in silence for what seemed like a very long time.
She asked, “Why are you wearing those outfits?”
Andre looked down at the white coveralls. “Oh, these come with the cart. Alcohol mist will mess up your clothes otherwise. Want me to turn on the vapor? It’s gin, I think. Just don’t light a match.”
Ignoring the offer, Zoey pulled out her phone and found her mother’s number on her contact list.
Echo said, “So, Titus Chobb’s entire army is converging on this spot and we’re rolling slowly down the street in a fragile glass booze cocoon.”
“What favors do we got left to call in?” asked Andre. “Alonzo’s got a convoy of treaded vehicles, look like tanks…”
Will said, “No, he wouldn’t get here in time.”
“If someone doesn’t come up with a plan of action in the next thirty seconds,” said Wu abruptly, “I am leaving with Zoey.”
Zoey got no answer from her mother, as usual.
“Does anyone know where my mom is?”
Budd said, “Her plan was to spend the evening carousing along the parade route. People set up beer tents in various spots, she was at one of them. Or all of ’em. We’ve had one of Kowalski’s people monitoring her.”
“All right, tell them I need to get a message to her. Tell her to pack and meet me at the estate. We’re leaving. Like she wanted.”
Will said, “You are?”
“Yep. Of everyone in my circle, she’s the only one whose advice actually makes sense. I never wanted this. Things aren’t getting better. Wu, your job is now to get me safe passage to the estate and then out of the city.”
Will made no effort to hide his annoyance. “So we’re doing this again? This thing where you threaten to quit and then somebody has to talk you down? Is this just your process?”
“FUCK YOU!” screamed Zoey, and everyone flinched.
Well, everyone but Will. His expression didn’t change. Zoey took a moment to gather herself.
“I … don’t like what this life is doing to me. And my worst fear is that I’ll start to like it. That I’ll follow your advice and become the kind of person, the kind of thing, that thrives in this world. The kind of person who’ll steal the organs of the poor to buy a boat. The kind of person my father was.”
“Every time things get hard, you retreat right back to this place. Thinking of Arthur as this monster, ignoring all of the lessons you’ve learned. Everything you’ve learned about what power really means.”
“And by lessons, you mean a pile of words to make victims sound like customers.”
Wu said, “Perhaps you could have this argument at another time? We need to establish a decoy transport that will appear to have Zoey in it, then we can—”
Will ignored him. “If you want to walk away, walk away. I’m done trying to talk you out of it.”
“Oh, and if you think I’m putting you in charge, think again. I’m giving the money away.”
“What does that even mean? You’re still picturing your wealth like it’s a pile of gold coins in your vault. It’s not. It’s a machine. You pay five thousand employees just to run your rental properties. Cleaners, maintenance, security. So you want to close it all down, fire all of them? Split up the cash and give it to the homeless in this big one-time payment that they’ll spend within a month on drugs and booze? And then what?”
Budd, also trying to cut off the argument, said, “Kowalski’s trying to get ahold of the guy who was watching your mother. Things are chaotic at the moment, the parade has started.”
Will remained focused on Zoey. “And what becomes of the properties? They get snapped up by one of the million developers in this country looking to swoop in here and get a piece of the pie. Landlords who won’t keep the tenants safe or the buildings warm. All of those people you fired, they’ll wind up with a boss who’ll treat them worse or they’ll wind up on the street, get deported. How many of your workers are Mexican, Haitian, Filipino? How many of your women are Korean, Chinese … you want to see them get sent back? Every part of your machine will wind up under the control of men who don’t know what a crisis of conscience even is. If you give up the money, you give up the power to make change.”
“So you’re saying I keep my power, but try to use it for good, to shape the world the way I see fit. In other words, the exact thing Arthur believed.”
Echo said, “There are two helicopters right above us—”
Will cut her off. “Being against power is easy, Zoey, because you never, ever need to offer solutions or take risks. Exercising power in the right way is what’s hard. This system favors psychopaths in the same way that basketball favors the tall. But Arthur’s last act was to put his machine under the control of someone he thought could be better.”
“Me.”
“No. A fantasy version of you he’d created in his mind. He didn’t know you. And you want to be better than him but you refuse to take a hard look at what being better actually means. If it means sick people die on the transplant waiting list because the government says it’s illegal to let them buy organs, that’s not being better, that’s just not wanting to get your hands dirty.”
“Meanwhile, I can’t leave my house without getting torn apart by a city that hates me and, as I just found out, has every reason to. That whole time we were looking for Stench Machine, I had this nagging voice in the back of my head saying ‘You deserve this.’ I’m a part of the problem. So I guess that’s two people who were right about this whole thing. My mom, and Titus Chobb.”
Wu slapped the counter with his palm and said, “I will put an end to this argument with force, if I have to.”
Echo said, “Our position is now being tracked from those helicopters. They know we’re in here.”
“All I ask,” said Will, quietly, “is that before you run away, you watch the video from a month ago, from the night of the hostage standoff.”
“None of that was on video.”
“Not the stuff with you and Tilley, I’m talking about the videos from the scene outside the building.”
“Why would I want to—”
“I heard from Kowalski,” Budd interrupted, loudly. “And he, ah, says his people lost track of your mother. Hours ago. Blink search of her face turns up nothing, but of course it would if she’d put on a spontaneous costume at some point.”
More to reassure herself than anything, Zoey said, “I’ve learned my lesson from the Stench Machine affair. We’re obviously not going to assume an abduction this time.”
Echo said, “We can track your mother’s phone, if by some miracle she has it on.”
Budd said, “Already doing that.” He stared at his screen for a moment, perplexed. “Huh.”
“Oh god,” said Zoey. “What?”
“She appears to be, uh, in the parade.”
“What does that mean?”
“Her phone is located inside one of the floats.”