Freya’s Palace hadn’t really registered with Zoey the first time she’d passed through it; she’d had other things on her mind at the time. Now, in her state of shambling exhaustion, she decided the building was a modern wonder. The space was all creamy marble and gentle curves that had somehow been engineered to absorb all sound. Walking through the lobby was like stepping outside on a morning coated in fresh snow, a silence like a pair of soft hands over her ears. In the center of the cavernous lobby was the aquarium, a blue pillar that stretched up for five stories, the elevator running up through the center. As they approached it, Zoey could hear gentle trickling fountains. No signs flashed, no announcements played; the space was an oasis in the sensory assault that was downtown Tabula Ra$a. Zoey badly wanted to just lie flat on the floor and rest forever in Freya’s peaceful embrace. She was pretty sure she had a concussion.
As Zoey and the two suit-goons rode up past the schools of startled fish, signs for the various spa services gently faded in and out on the screen as they passed their floors. Massage, beauty treatments, that sort of thing. Woman stuff. Then, at some point she happened to notice one of the floors was devoted to Cupid’s Eros, the sex therapy company her mother worked for.
Wait.
Did she work out of this location? Why did Zoey not know that? Was that just a weird coincidence?
The elevator reached the glassed-in boarding area on the top floor where the looming black shape above them had swallowed the stars. Zoey stepped on board the Innerer Schweinehund to find Titus Chobb was sitting alone at a table, her mother nowhere to be found. Chobb, however, was hardly alone in the passenger hold—Zoey counted six VOP guards in full bumblebee armor. The two guys in suits were following her in, so that was eight men and those were just the ones she could see. All for little old Zoey.
All she had brought with her was a tiny object no bigger than a shirt button. It was in the front right pocket of her jeans and she actually had no idea if it had survived the altercation at the parade. But it was there, the lone object she’d been given before leaving the mobile vapor pod. She, in the end, had only one target. Nothing else really mattered.
“Please sit,” said Chobb, sounding casual. “You don’t want to be standing when we take off, the floor shifts rather abruptly. And you don’t look like you are very steady on your feet even now.”
“Where is my mother?”
“She’s here. But we need to have a conversation, just the two of us. No competing voices in our ears to cloud our thoughts. Please, sit.”
“What if I don’t want to sit? Does anyone ever tell you no?”
“You can stand if you prefer. Just grab onto something.”
Actually, she couldn’t stand. She shambled over and managed to land her butt in the chair before she collapsed onto the floor. She ran her fingers over her front pocket, felt the tiny lump there. Titus had been eating some kind of dainty little salad prior to her arrival, which annoyed Zoey for several reasons.
He put down his fork and said, “I assume you know my son went public with the story. The details of his transplant, the truth behind Dexter Tilley’s demise.”
“Good for him. That’s the story that could have been told all along. Then none of this would have happened.”
“The bounty for your confession was of course lifted as well, by whatever anonymous donor had placed it.”
Zoey tried to roll her eyes, but even those muscles were too sore to work properly.
“I want you to know,” said Chobb, “that whole campaign against you, the unfortunate use of Mr. Tilley’s corpse, that was all Mr. Vikerness, acting on his own. He was trying to solve a problem on the fly, in an extremely misguided way. Within hours of Tilley’s disappearance, ugly rumors started to spread. Dirk was tasked with quelling that controversy. Still, I do not defend my former employee’s methods, they were extreme and irresponsible.”
“Convenient that he took all of that responsibility with him to the grave, leaving none for you.”
“I do not absolve myself. However, I feel like you should in turn acknowledge that you took things too far by abducting Martius.”
“Well, that of course was all Will Blackwater, acting on his own. Grossly irresponsible. And all of those other words you just used.”
The airship jolted and Zoey once again watched the city fall away around her. The waitress emerged. She was now only partially nude, dressed as Eve, wearing a few leaves and a real damned snake that rested on her shoulders. She brought out a pair of delicately plated dishes of what looked like some kind of sliced pork with a side of glazed chunks of something or other. Zoey barely glanced at it.
“I know you haven’t had dinner,” said Chobb. “I’m told this should be to your liking. My chef, he can work miracles. Any raw material can become perfection in his kitchen.”
“So, kidnapping my mother, was that Dirk Vikerness’s idea, too? And trying to kill me down there just half an hour ago?”
“We’ll discuss your mother in a moment. As for his actions tonight, I assure you that I had not been in contact with Dirk since his injury, out at the storage lockers. And even then, he was largely working on his own. His behavior had, unfortunately, become erratic. He was involved in that radical men’s group that I never fully understood but regrettably had associated myself with. I will take responsibility for that as well. Sometimes you align yourself with parties with whom you believe you share a common goal, only to find that all along, you were the tail and they were the dog.”
“I’ll keep that in mind if I’m ever tempted to align myself with a murder cult in order to further my own selfish ends.”
“Yes, surely you will never find yourself in such a situation.”
Chobb sliced off a piece of the meat.
“Is that enough discussion for you to bring my mother out?”
“I assume you know that this radical group I speak of is also the reason you’re here. Or perhaps you didn’t know that? And I don’t mean here at this table, but rather here in this city. My association with them goes back some years. I’m not proud of that.”
“That’s fascinating. See, the thing is, that hate group kind of isn’t anything without your cash and backing. So I’d say it’s entirely your fault.”
Only then did it sink in for Zoey what exactly Titus had just said. About how this group, and by extension, Titus Chobb, was responsible for the current state of her life.
“Wait. Did you just confess to killing my father?”
“I will acknowledge that I set the wheels in motion. I provided financial backing and other resources to men I believed could help contain your father and his madness.” Chobb studied her expression. “How do you feel about that?”
Zoey actually wasn’t sure.
“My relationship with my father was … complicated.”
“All relationships with fathers are.”
“Does Will know you were behind that? If so, I’m not sure why you’re still alive.”
“We’ll discuss that in a moment. But I want to say that I have barely known a moment’s peace ever since I heard rumors of a grossly irresponsible technology that was only a modest investment away from becoming reality. Your father brought Raiden to life, putting the power to change human evolution in the hands of people who neither understood its implications nor were capable of understanding them. Your father built this city, and for that we are all in his debt. But in the end, he was overtaken by a deranged fantasy. If it had been up to me, none of it would have happened, including his tragic end. He just could not leave well enough alone. Both then and now, I went looking for allies as an act of desperation.”
“See, you’re trying to sell me on you being this remorseful bystander in all this. But I know where you came from and I know what you are. You’re a butcher. Wait, what am I talking about? A butcher actually gets his hands in the guts, does the work himself. You’re the butcher’s supervisor or something. I don’t know. I’m tired.”
“My guards have saved more lives than all of this city’s doctors put together. Vanguard of Peace security staff have stopped twenty-three sexual assaults tonight. Meanwhile, due to your father’s actions, the clock was ticking until the day one of his monstrosities would come and kick in my door. I still have nightmares about it.”
“Okay, and twelve hours ago I talked to Megaboss Alonzo, who has nightmares about your armed thugs terrorizing his people.”
“If my men do that, it’s only because they are familiar with Alonzo’s reputation. I heard he once ate a human heart.”
“Look at you, operating with bad intentions because you assume everyone else is doing the same. It’s like every awful person I’ve ever known works from the same playbook.”
“It’s just how the world works. In conflict, the side that takes the initiative wins. If you project that conflict is inevitable, the smart thing to do, the responsible thing to do, is to move immediately, end it before it begins. The longer you wait, the more both sides prepare and dig in, the worse the devastation will be.”
“So you kill people in real life based on horrors that occur in your imagination. Got it.”
Chobb shook his head, sighed, and took another bite.
Another man in a suit with a gun stepped out of the bar area—so that made nine guards—and said, “An aircraft is moving to intercept us.”
“Thank you, Antonio.” Chobb seemed unsurprised by the news. To Zoey, he said, “I assume that’s Will Blackwater and his team in that aircraft. What is it you think he’s going to try to do here?”
“What would you try to do, in his situation?”
“Win.”
“And what do you think that looks like?”
“Attempt a violent extraction, even if it means everyone on board this craft is killed in the process, including you. If he negotiates terms, he establishes that taking you hostage is an effective way to extract concessions. He’d just be assuring that it happens again.”
“Yeah, I think I remember him saying something about that. But you weren’t going to do that to us when we had Marti on board. You weren’t going to risk his safety just to look strong.”
Chobb gave her a look as if to say, “I wasn’t?”
Zoey reached into her pocket and brought out the object. It just looked like a little silver button, like it had fallen off someone’s shirt. She kept it between her finger and thumb, under the table.
“So what was the point of luring me up here, then?” she asked.
“My goal is to try to talk some sense into you. Maybe we start by agreeing that we are both here because we failed to contain those we depended on to do certain labors on our behalf.” He gestured to the plate. “Please, you must be hungry. If you’re worried it’s poison, we can trade plates.”
Will had a rule about eating in these situations but Zoey was too exhausted to remember what it was. She was pretty sure you were supposed to eat, to show you weren’t intimidated and to signal that you were there in peace and good faith. Also, she was starving.
She took a small bite of the braised pork or whatever it was, eating with her right hand while keeping the left under the table, with the button. The meat was, of course, excellent. Werner Wolff’s reputation was of a man who could feed you your own shoe and leave you wanting to lick the plate.
Titus watched her. “I heard you’re thinking about cashing out. Leaving town.”
“What, did my mom tell you that?”
He gestured to the meat. “Do you like it?”
“It’s pretty good.” She took another bite. “What is it?”
“Surprised you don’t recognize it. Based on what I’ve heard.”
“I’m torn on the decision. On one hand, I hate this place because it’s full of people like you. On the other hand, leaving means this place then falls into the hands of people like you and for some reason that also bothers me. I’m thinking I need to stay here and keep you in check.”
“I see.”
Zoey sliced off another bite of the meat. “I’m not going any further with this until you tell me where my mother is.”
Titus put down his fork and laced his fingers, resting his elbows on the table.
“I’d seen your mother every day, for months. Did you know that? Though I didn’t know that’s who she was at the time. There is a cafe, in the lobby of Freya’s. I stopped there every morning on the way up to my office. We always wound up in line together. She was outgoing, full of curiosity. Reminded me of Freya.”
“She reminded you of … the building back there?”
“Freya’s Palace was designed, built, and run by my wife, prior to her death. So then there she was, your mother, today at the parade. She came and found me at my spot along the route, came to plead on your behalf. And it all seemed very convenient. Very orchestrated. Like someone knew my weakness and went right for it.”
“What did you do to her?”
Zoey put her fork down.
She looked closely at the meat on her plate.
“Zoey, there is a … cloud … that hangs over me. I can’t explain it to you, because you haven’t yet been down this road. All I can say is that something will happen in your life that will slice right through it, an inflamed wound separating everything that comes after from all that came before. The end of a career, the loss of a limb, the death of a spouse. And I’m not talking about some breakup in college, before you’ve even figured out who you are yet. I mean something that will hit you after you’ve come to believe the world is solid under your feet, thought you knew the shape of your life. It’s like if one morning the sun just didn’t rise. For me, it was Freya dying of cancer. Not just the death, but the original misdiagnosis, the year of fighting, the periods of false hope, the mistakes I made that may have cost both of us everything. After that day, after that red gash across the timeline, you look at your old photos and see a stranger looking back. Your mind gets pulled in so many directions that it loses its shape, becomes something unrecognizable. Monstrous.”
Zoey couldn’t speak. The tiny button was being squeezed between her thumb and index finger so tightly she feared she’d shatter it.
“Anyway,” continued Chobb, picking up his fork to sever another bite. “Your mother made an impassioned appeal. And I listened. I offered to have her for dinner and she said yes. That’s why we’re having her for dinner tonight.”
Chobb stuffed the hunk of meat into his mouth.