The Suits were gathered under the buffalo head, watching two feeds on a split screen—one was black with the words “AWAITING MOLECH” in stark white letters, the placeholder for the Molech announcement that was to start at any moment. The other was drone video of the massive crowds gathering downtown, in the aftermath of the tower collapse. Zoey noted a half dozen street vendors and food trucks had rolled up to serve snacks to the onlookers. At that moment, the synchronized skyline feed switched away from the ad it had been playing (for the film James Bond Infiltrates a Space Station Full of Ninjas and Has Sex with Four Women) and replaced it with a single gigantic face, looming over the city.
Molech’s face was bathed in a menacing shadow. When he spoke, his voice was modulated to sound like a god calling down from the heavens, the bass vibrating the streets below. The crowd went nuts, reacting like it was a concert and the headliner had just taken the stage.
“My name is Molech,” boomed the voice. “I am a man the likes of which you have never seen before. You could say that, in fact, I am no longer a man, but something more. I mean, am still a man, in terms of gender, that’s not what I meant when I said I wasn’t a man. I’m all man. More man than you can possibly comprehend. I am well endowed. I am male on a level that you … just won’t even believe it when you see it.”
Molech paused and glanced off to the right, as if someone off-screen was reminding him of something.
“Right. As you saw, I destroyed Livingston Tower, with the power from my right hand. And this is just a small preview of what is coming, as I reveal my true strength to this city, and to the world. The dirty money that built Livingston’s skyscrapers and slums is collected by scheming men who hide behind gated walls and grow fat on your paychecks. Men with false power, built on weasel lies buried in fine print. Well, for them the sun has set, and now the long night has begun. And thus, their reckoning comes at noon on December 21, the day before the longest night of the year.
“In forty-eight hours I will reach out with my mighty hand and destroy seven targets, seven symbols of the false powers in this city, to demonstrate real power, in full view of Tabula Rasa and all of mankind. The false powers are guns, money, and superstition—the smoke and mirrors that keeps beta cowards in mansions and limousines. So first will be the home office of the Tabula Rasa Security Co-Op—big, bad guns hired by fat cats, as if they deserve police but we don’t. Then, in no particular order I’m going to smash the Tabula Rasa mosque, and the Catholic church the next block over, so you can watch as neither of your gods strike me with lightning even while I take a messy burrito shit on the smoking ruins of your precious faith. Then I’m going to execute a foreclosure of the Bank One tower. And guess what—you rebuild it, I’m just gonna knock it down again.
“There’ll be a couple of surprises thrown in, before my tour of destruction will culminate with the estate of Arthur Livingston, which I will reduce to rubble while on the spikes of the front gate I will impale the bodies of his piglet daughter and shitwind crew, who’ve controlled this city behind the scenes since before it was a city. You have forty-eight hours. To do what, you ask? Nothing. I am making no demands, I will carry out my attack regardless of what action you take. See you then.”
Molech stared in silence from across the skyline, then turned and said, “Did you cut the feed? The light is still on. No. Push the—”
Molech disappeared from the buildings, and across every surface the feed was replaced by a countdown, in digits thirty stories high.
Zoey said, “I don’t get it. What does he gain by warning everybody? Why not just start blowing stuff up?”
Will said, “Back up, and walk through it. What do all of his targets have in common?”
“They’re all, uh, prominent?”
“And?”
“And … their owners aren’t gonna sit back and let him do it. They’re going to stand up to him.”
“More than you know—he’s going after Co-Op’s main office—that place is a fortress, and they have some military-grade hardware they can put on the street. But—”
“That’s what he wants,” finished Zoey. “To be caught on camera ripping through tanks with his bare hands, to make a demonstration. So he gives everybody plenty of notice so they can all tune in to see it. Gotcha.”
Budd said, “Then he’ll sit back and wait for the bids to come rollin’ in. Just a big, ol’ infomercial, for his new product line.”
Andre said, “Plus he’s going to blow up this house, so there’s that. Somebody should probably tell Carlton.”
Echo said, “The Co-Op isn’t going to sit back and wait for him to come to their door. The Fire Palace will be riddled with bullets by morning, it’s not like that place is a secret any longer.”
Will said, “You think Molech doesn’t know that? That’s not going to go well.”
Zoey said, “Well, what’s our plan? Because I was about to suggest paying somebody to go level those buildings myself.”
Will said, “First, we need to assess what we have to work with. We need to go through the coin, and figure out exactly what we have there.”
Andre said, “And by ‘we,’ he means Echo will go through it while the rest of us stay far out of her way, occasionally muttering words of encouragement and giving her shoulder rubs.”
Zoey said, “What difference does the coin make now? None of us have the implants, what good is the software to us?” She looked at Will and said, “Wait, you don’t have the implants, do you?”
“No.”
“Like you didn’t get some augmentation that lets you metabolize alcohol faster?”
Echo said, “The gold drivers are just a small fraction of the data on the coin—the rest is schematics for the devices themselves. There are two petabytes of files on there—fabricator instructions for implants, prototypes, and all sorts of other gear we can’t even identify because most of it isn’t in any kind of human language.”
“But what good does that do us, considering the workshop where this stuff got built is now a giant black crater?”
Will had nodded and said, “Exactly. Budd?”
Budd put on his cowboy hat and said, “I’ll make some calls.” Got to be wearing the hat in the hologram, Zoey figured.
Will said, “Andre and I will go meet with the hired guns, before they do something stupid. Zoey, you’ll stay here and investigate the house staff.”
“Who?”
“Well, you’ve got that theory that somebody on the inside is leaking information, find out who it is. Watch the grounds crew in particular, I saw a guy cleaning the gutters yesterday in a way that was particularly suspicious.”
“So after your big speech about heroism, you just gave me a clearly made-up job just to keep me safe in the house while the men go out and do hero stuff?”
Will put on his hat. “That’s not entirely accurate. For one, you’re definitely not safe in this house.”
“I’m going with you.”
He shrugged. “You’re the boss.” He turned on his heels and headed out of the room, Andre gave Zoey an “after you” gesture.
On the way out she asked, “So … what are we doing, exactly?”
Will said, “The French Drop.”