Molech grabbed the drone and smashed it on the pavement, sending a half dozen hard-shell tacos scattering around his feet.
He flung the wreckage aside, in time to be met by another taco drone, this one white and decorated with a logo bearing a cartoon chipotle pepper. Behind it were three drones bearing the logo of a purple and yellow bell. Molech swung and kicked and slaughtered Mexican food with every mighty blow, while a quarter billion extremely confused Blink users watched.
And still they came, every Mexican food delivery drone that happened to be in the air at that moment, their navigation systems hacked and commanded to fly as fast as possible to the exact location where Molech was standing. This part had been Zoey’s idea, and if it caused Molech to run over and crush her skull in a fit of rage, she wouldn’t mind this being the last thing she saw.
Molech took the drones out one by one, screaming incoherent commands to his utterly baffled henchmen, until he stood victorious over the shattered carcasses of three dozen Mexican food-themed quadrocopters, breathing heavily and trying to suppress his rage. His clenching mechanical fists were covered in brown and white streaks of refried beans and sour cream.
He surveyed the wreckage and said, “What the hell was that?”
Scott squinted at the smears of food on the pavement. “Did somebody order a bunch of Mexican?”
“Get the camera back on me.” Scott did, and Molech said, “All right, I don’t know who pulled that little stunt, but I’m about to—”
Molech’s face abruptly vanished from the skyline feed.
The video on the walls of the buildings downtown scrambled and pixelated and finally resolved into a new image. What appeared there was the face of a masked Andre Knox. Andre bellowed a comic book villain’s evil laugh.
“Fools! You have fallen for my diversion! I want to thank my junior partner, Molech, for setting the stage. That boy sure does love his tacos.”
The shot zoomed out to reveal Andre in full supervillain gear—the exact costume Molech was wearing, only with the blue highlights and codpiece done in red. In addition, Andre had added a rather flamboyant red domino mask, and a large-brimmed black hat with a red feather stuck into the band. He was stroking a black cat.
Molech gaped at the figure that towered over him from the skin of the nearest building.
“Who the … what the hell is happening?”
Andre’s booming voice continued. “As my assistant-slash-underling Molech indicated, we are a terrorist organization. We call ourselves Fire and Ice, and Tabula Rasa, and then the world, will feel the steam of our combined passion, and fury.”
Molech looked at Scott, then at Zoey, then back up at the building.
Scott was messing with the camera. “They’re blocking our feed. Got to have a drone up there jamming the signal or somethin’.”
“As you now know,” continued Andre, “over the last few months, we have built in secret a lair right in the heart of this city. The place from which I am broadcasting is invulnerable to assault from the ground and the air—as you have seen, armies will bounce off our walls like mere gerbils off a bulldozer. And now, behold!”
The view switched to an exterior aerial shot of the former Fire and Ice Palaces, captured from a drone hovering over a street choked with traffic from fleeing citizens and transfixed rubberneckers. Simultaneously the black tarps fell off each of the two towers like a pair of dresses on prom night, settling silently on the streets below.
On the each building, Molech had gotten his volcanic glass etchings, the images vividly outlined in glowing orange, as if cut from still-hot magma. A. J. Skelnik’s facade crews had done a fine job, it really did look like obsidian. The etchings, however, were not what Molech had described in the work order. That’s because twelve hours earlier, a brand-new rendering had been uploaded to the grinders that had been set to carve the relief into each tower’s veneer. It was the one thing they were able to get Skelnick to agree to before Budd’s network got him and his crew out of the state.
On the tower that used to be the Ice Palace, there was now a detailed rendering of Andre, wearing his hat and mask. And only his hat and mask. Zoey had never seen the real Andre naked, and doubted she ever would, but the rendering of Andre on the building had been very, very generous when it came to how well endowed he was.
On the Fire Palace across the street, instead of the huge rendering of his scowling face that Molech had ordered and paid for, there was another full-body nude. This one depicting Molech, wearing only his robot hands. Zoey had never seen Molech naked, and prayed she never would, but the rendering on the building had been very, very stingy when depicting Molech’s genitalia. The Blink algorithm, tracking the camera movements and zooms of thousands of onlookers, instantly decided this specific part of the facade was most worthy of notice.
The expression on the real Molech’s face would have been hilarious, Zoey thought, if she hadn’t been seeing it on someone capable of effortlessly vaporizing everyone in the vicinity. He had the look of a chess player who at the same moment realized his king had been checkmated and that the beer he’d been drinking was actually piss. This had been Phase One of the plan—a stage they had simply referred to as “Confusion.” And if nothing else, Molech certainly did look confused. Zoey coughed and a spray of blood splattered across the metallic blue paint of the monster truck hood. She decided that she still didn’t feel like her side was winning.
Scott said, “Is that … is that the design you wanted, man?” Molech didn’t answer. He looked like he was going to have a rage-stroke. Scott said, “I like it. Kind of got a Greek statue vibe goin’.”
Molech made a sort of hissing growl, then stormed toward where Zoey was tied to the truck and grabbed her by the neck.
“IS THAT YOU? Is this your people doing this? How did he get inside the tower? TELL ME.”
Zoey actually came up with something really clever to say, but her whole jaw was now swollen shut from her busted teeth, and everything was all sticky with coagulated blood in there. Her retort just came out as a series of wet moans and grunts.
He turned toward Scott and screamed, “GET IN THE TRUCK! We’re goin’ to the Fire Palace.”
Scott said, “Man, think! Don’t you get this is what they want you to do? I say we move on to the next target, stick with the plan. Whatever little prank they’re pullin’ back at the palace, that don’t matter now. Think it through—what’s more important, takin’ over the whole world, or having a few hundred million people think you got a baby dick?”
Molech stopped, and thought it over.