A Lot of Fucking Balls
At one forty-five the next afternoon, Jake sat in the driver’s seat with a pair of binoculars in his claw, studying a small, low single-story office building set back from the road. Tall trees flanked a long ribbon of white concrete that led up to the door, where a sign read “Strategy+ Management Consulting Inc” in eggshell blue letters on a black background. Two men in black rent-a-cop uniforms stood beside the door, arms folded in front of them. Nervous energy radiated from Jake in waves.
“You seem wound up for someone who’s about to see an old friend,” Nadine observed.
“We didn’t part company under the best of circumstances,” Jake said. “Kinda hoping it’s water under the bridge, but…”
“But?”
“Hope for the best, plan for the worst, right?” He rose from the driver’s seat. Yellow triangles flashed, pointing to the compact handgun and taser tucked into the back of his pants. “Did you transfer some of that money onto some new bank chips?”
“Yes.” Nadine tucked the squares of white plastic into her pocket. “What do we do if your frien—sorry, your old acquaintance doesn’t want to help?”
“Guess I’ll just have to be extra persuasive.”
They stepped out into the shimmering heat. As they approached, one of the security guards, burly man with dark skin who stood nearly as wide as he was tall, spoke inaudibly into a microphone clipped to the shoulder of his shirt. He nodded to his taller, blonder companion, and the two of them stepped forward.
“Good afternoon!” Jake said in his most cheerful voice. “We have an appointment with your boss.”
“Yeah, well, meeting’s off,” the shorter man said. “Boss doesn’t want to see you. He’s given us very…specific instructions.” He slipped a truncheon from its belt loop.
“Listen, I’m sure we can talk about this like reasonable people,” Jake said.
The man shook his head. “Nope.”
His companion headed toward Nadine. “Normally, I would never hit a lady,” he said, almost apologetically. “Nothing personal, you understand. Just business.”
He swung his fist. Nadine just had time to catch a quick glimpse of a blurred red arc when something detonated on the side of her face. She reeled, stunned. He drew back for another punch.
His companion swung his nightstick. Jake was already moving, ducking low. The truncheon passed through the space where he’d been. Jake spun and ducked. The truncheon came down again, connecting solidly with his prosthetic arm. He laughed.
The taller of the two men came at Nadine once more, ghostly red cones springing from his fist. She dodged. The red turned green. He grunted in surprise and lunged at her, arms wide, grappling her. She went down on hot pavement, pinned beneath him.
Nadine heard a pop and an electric crackle. The man went rigid, his sweat-soaked face inches from hers, a look of surprise and pain frozen on his features. The crackle came again. His eyes rolled up.
The larger man struck again. Jake yelped in pain. The taser skidded from his fingers. Another blow and he fell to his knees. “You know,” his attacker said casually, “I think I’ll fuck you up extra for that.”
Nadine heaved the limp form from atop her and scrambled to her feet. She snatched the gun from Jake’s waistband and leveled it at the larger man. He froze, then turned toward her.
“I think you’ll want to show us in now,” Jake said.
“Or what? Your friend here will shoot me? She doesn’t seem the type.” He reached down to grab Jake by the collar, dragging him to his feet one-handed.
Nadine squeezed the trigger. The gun clicked. The security guard’s jaw dropped in a comedic caricature of surprise. Jake grabbed his wrist and twisted sharply. Nadine heard the distinct crack of breaking bone. He crumpled, face a mask of agony.
“Let me kill them,” Nadine said.
“No. That’s not what we’re here for.” Jake pressed Nadine’s arm down, took the gun from her trembling fingers. “Lucky for you my friend didn’t know the safety was on,” he said to the man with the broken wrist. “Toss me your keys and radio. His too. And your backup piece.”
“I don’t have—”
“You want to go home tonight? Do it or I’ll make sure my companion gets to play with you instead.”
He complied, face contorted with agony, drawing a compact revolver from an ankle holster with two fingers. Jake collected his gear and did the same for his friend, who lay face down on the sidewalk. “Now cuff yourself to your friend here, or I’ll let my companion add another notch to her belt,” he said. “I’d tell you how many people she’s killed, but you wouldn’t believe me.”
The man fumbled a pair of folding black handcuffs from his belt one-handed and locked them around his wrist. He went to do the same to the limp form of the other guard. Jake shook his head. “No. Your wrist to his ankle.”
Muttering curses, the man complied. Jake fished his companion’s cuffs from his belt and cuffed them together, wrist to ankle. “Now, we’ll be back in a minute. This meeting shouldn’t take long. I think your boss is gonna be real happy we saw him.” He tucked the gun back into his waistband. “Let’s go meet the man.”
Inside, they found a dingy reception room with a long, empty desk along the far wall. Above the desk, painted letters on the wall read “Strategy+ Management Consulting: Your Business Is Our Business.” A single solitary camera glowered at them from one corner near the ceiling. A door in the side wall buzzed. “Let me do the talking,” Jake said.
They went through into a small office. A dark-haired man in a shapeless green jacket looked up from a desk cluttered with papers, bits of electronics, pieces of drones, and what looked like a doll’s head. A wide grin spread across his broad face. “Well, I’ll be god-damned! Jake! What’s it been, man, eight years?”
“More like nine.”
“Time flies. You look good, man. Well, mostly. What happened to your arm?”
“Belarus.”
“Fuuuuuuck.” He exhaled and sat back in his chair. “You were in that shitshow? Jesus.”
“Yeah. Army fixed me up after. I can even feel it. Direct sensory input.” Jake opened and closed the claw. Servos whined. “Still itches sometimes, though. The docs say it’s all in my head. What can you do?”
“Rough, man. You still working for—”
“No,” Jake said. “I’ve been exploring new opportunities. That’s why I’m here. I need a favor.”
He leaned back further in his chair and spread his hands. “Hey, anything for an old friend, am I right? What do you need? A place to stay? Papers? Stims? Whatever you need, man. I owe you.” His eyes flicked toward the door.
“Yes, you do. I had something else in mind.”
“Like what?”
“Blueprints.”
His eyes flicked toward the door again. “Blueprints? Of what?”
“The Terracone Research facility. And don’t bother waiting for those Neanderthals you laughingly call ‘security.’ They aren’t coming.”
Safan lunged for the desk. The gun materialized as if by magic in Jake’s hand. “Don’t.”
“Fuck you.” Safan’s face hardened. “You’ve got a lot of fucking balls, coming into my place after you brought the cops down on me.”
“After I what?”
“’Bout four hours after you turned up in my space, the cops raided my business. ‘Simulated child sex acts,’ they said. You telling me you don’t know anything about that?”
“Yes,” Jake said. “I’m telling you I don’t know shit about that. Is that why you told your boys to put a beating on us? After you said you’d see us? I’m very disappointed, Safan. Without our word, what do we have?”
“You think you’ll get out of here alive? Is that what you’re thinking?”
Jake shrugged. “I give myself 60/40 odds. Better than you. You ever visit Australia, Safan?”
“Australia? The fuck you talking about? No, I’ve never been to Australia. What the fuck does Australia have to do with anything?”
“There’s this bush in Australia called the gympie gympie tree. Locals call it the suicide bush. You know why?” Safan glared at Jake, his face a mask of loathing. “It produces this toxin called moroidin,” Jake went on. “Complicated molecule, very hard to synthesize. Just a tiny amount of it causes agony that lasts for months. There are these little hairs all over the plant, see, and if you touch it, they inject the toxin into your skin. The pain is so bad a lot of folks who tangle with it end up killing themselves just to make it stop.”
“Yeah? And?”
“Turns out someone’s cracked the synthesis, made it into a weapon. Same people murdered a friend of mine to keep it quiet. I’m really keen on finding out who and why.”
“What the fuck do you want?”
“I told you. Blueprints.”
“Terracone is a military contractor.”
“I know.”
“You really think I’ll help you?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“You always were a shitty judge of character. Why would I give you a goddamn thing?”
“Two reasons,” Jake said. “First, you don’t want to die. That’s where any thought of double-crossing me or turning me in leads, so I urge you in the strongest possible terms to banish all such thoughts from your mind.”
“And second?”
“Time hasn’t been kind to you, Safan. Look at you, in this shithole, grubbing for crumbs. Running an online brothel? Really? I remember when you had ambition.”
“Yeah, well, at least I got two arms.”
“Touché. Thing is, Safan, I’m your fairy fucking godmother. You just don’t have the sense to see it. Play this right and I’ll make all your dreams come true. Show him, Melody.”
Nadine fished out one of the new bank chips. Jake tossed it on the desk. “Go ahead. Take a look. Slowly.”
Safan picked up the card with the tips of two fingers like he expected it to bite him and slotted it into a reader. Lines of text hovered in the air. He whistled. “You must be pretty desperate.”
“I prefer to think of it as ‘well-funded and highly motivated.’”
“Okay. Assume, just as a hypothetical, that I can get what you want. How do you know I won’t just cash that and then turn you in?”
“You really think I’d pay you before you deliver? That’s just the retainer, to help cover expenses. There’s twice that much on delivery.”
“What do you need? You’re not paying that much just for site plans. You can get those for fifty bucks at the city planning office.”
“We need everything. Security systems, data links in and out, security rotations, everything.”
Safan whistled. “You’re planning to break in.”
“Something like that.”
“Wow. Okay, your funeral.”
“We all gotta die some time.”
Safan relaxed back into his chair and tucked the bank chip in his pocket with a broad, congenial smile. “You know what I always liked about you? You’re my kind of crazy. It’s a pleasure working with you again, Jake.”
“I’m glad we have an understanding.”
“You going to give me a number?”
“Fuck no,” Jake said. “We’ll be in touch. By the way, your security team is lying out front handcuffed together. You might want to call an ambulance. And give them a raise.”
“After they let you in? I should fire their asses.”
“To be fair, you didn’t give them any warning what they were up against.”
“No, I suppose I didn’t.”
“To old times,” Jake said.
“To old times.”
“Oh. One more thing,” Jake said.
Safan raised an eyebrow. “Hm?”
He tensed as Jake pulled a small memory card from his pocket. “DNA sequence with MHC profile. If, hypothetically, this were to belong to someone I wasn’t much fond of, might you know someone who knows someone who could—”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Out in the parking lot, the two security guards, still cuffed together wrist to ankle, glared at Jake and Nadine. The one Jake had tasered spat. His companion with the broken wrist sweated profusely in the heat, face contorted in pain. About halfway back to the RV, Jake stopped Nadine. “Anything back there seem odd to you?”
“All of it?”
“No, I mean particularly odd.”
“What are you getting at?”
Jake frowned, face thoughtful. “We see an old associate of mine, and that very same day his business is raided by the cops. What are the odds?”
“He seems shady. I’m sure he’s no stranger to police intervention.”
“He’s also careful. And virtual kiddie porn isn’t his thing. I’d bet half the money we just gave him that he got raided because we got in touch with him.”
“You’re being paranoid,” Nadine said.
“Maybe. From now on, watch what you say unless absolutely necessary, ’kay?”
“Yeah.”
“So,” Jake said when he settled into the driver’s seat, “that was disappointing. I really hoped he would see reason. Still, I do have a few other contacts in Houston.” He put his finger to his lips at Nadine’s puzzled expression. “I’m hungry for something that doesn’t come out of a vacuum-sealed pouch. You?”
“Um, sure, yeah,” Nadine said.
They navigated the alien streets of Houston, so different from the streets Nadine was used to. All around them, enormous, noisy internal-combustion cars seasoned the air with aromatic hydrocarbon stew. Everywhere she looked, towering cranes swung alarmingly over the streets, erecting bland, characterless skyscrapers of no discernable purpose.
They headed away from the city core until they found a cheap Indian drive-through. Jake parked and rummaged in the back for a while. Nadine opened her mouth. “I thought—” Jake brought his finger to his lips, a quick flicker of motion.
Nadine watched him take a small, complicated-looking device from a battered box wrapped in black electrical tape. He fiddled with it for a moment, then paced up and down the length of the RV, frowning at it. He lingered for a time near the door. Any time she opened her mouth, Jake silenced her with a quick touch of his finger to his lips.
Finally he stowed the device with a grunt and beckoned her to follow him out the door. In the restaurant, Nadine said “What was that about?” between bites of chicken makhani.
“RV is bugged,” Jake said. “Tiny thing stuck on the edge of the door.”
“Martin Taylor?”
“Gotta be.”
“How?”
“At a guess? The lot lizard,” Jake said. “They probably picked us up coming through customs. Musta put two and two together, figured out you were traveling as Melody. Maybe scanned your implant when they caught you, backtracked from the ID to that name, flagged it at the border.”
“That’s why the raid on your friend’s place?”
“Probably, yeah.”
“Did you destroy it?”
“Destroy it?” Jake gave her a feral grin. “They don’t know we know. That presents us with a certain window of opportunity, if we’re careful. Taylor’s been a couple steps ahead of us this whole time. Now maybe, just maybe, we have a chance to change that.”
“How?”
“Dunno yet. Interesting to think about though, isn’t it? Meantime, be careful what you say. If you need to say anything sensitive, write it down or do it outside.”
“Do they know where we are?”
“Don’t know. The bug I found piggybacks on mesh wireless and cell but it’s too small to receive GPS. Cutting-edge, military or near-military-equivalent. Expensive. I’ll do a search for passive trackers.”
That night, as Nadine lay on the lumpy mattress searching for sleep, doubt and worry gnawed at her. Jake had gone over every inch of the RV, inside and out, on the pretext of looking for a water leak and pronounced himself satisfied that whoever’d put the bug hadn’t done anything else. Nadine argued for abandoning the RV, but Jake seemed adamant that it would mean throwing away the one slender advantage they possessed. In the end, Nadine grudgingly agreed. “Besides,” Jake said, “it’s not like they can call the police. Not without answering questions they’d really prefer not to. Especially in light of that package of digital fuck-you you uploaded. They’re still in crisis-control mode.”
Visions of faceless figures kicking in the door filled her dreams that night. She woke with the dawn, head still swimming with visions of blood and death. “Good morning, sleepyhead!” Jake offered from the driver’s seat as she pulled the tab on a tube of coffee substitute. “You look like hell.”
“It’s a reflection of the company I keep,” Nadine said.
“You were talking in your sleep again.”
“Did I have anything interesting to say?”
“Couldn’t tell.”
She blinked and peered at the freeway out the windshield. “Where are we going?”
“Supplies. You’re drinking that stuff like you like it. Also going to see if I can find an old friend of mine, you know, since Safan seems too preoccupied with his own problems for the likes of us.” He gave Nadine a flicker of a wink, barely perceptible.
They drove for nearly an hour. Nadine had the sense they were somehow on the opposite side of Houston, though Jake seemed to be navigating using his implant; the RV’s touchscreen showed only a set of controls for what passed as a sound system. He pulled into a bland shopping mall that looked as if it dated from decades ago, in front of a nondescript store with dark-tinted windows. A plain painted sign propped in one of the windows read “Army Navy Surplus” with a Texas flag on one side and a Federation of Free States flag on the other. Next to it, a garish storefront promised “Video Poker! Lotto! Keno! BIG PAYOUTS!!!” in scrolling characters above the door. Brilliant holographic ads crowding every square inch of the windows, luring them in with the promise of cigarettes, ice-cold beer, and fresh hot sandwiches.
Jake turned off the RV and hopped out. Nadine followed, rock in her shoe, fake violet hair pulled over her face, finishing the last of her coffee substitute as she stepped into the heat. A bell over the door jangled as they went in. The air inside seemed faintly disused. Filtered sunlight did little to brighten the long rows of dark-colored shelves loaded with flags, military rations, and assorted pouches, belts, rucksacks, and other things whose function Nadine couldn’t fathom. A long metal clothes rack near the door bore an enormous load of military fatigues, vests in a dozen different styles of camouflage, and T-shirts emblazoned with Federation of Free States slogans. The store was bare of customers.
At the counter, a man in a leather vest adorned with embroidered patches stood behind a compact electronic register, steel-gray hair tied back in a braid. He nodded to Jake. “You serve?”
“Belarus.”
The man whistled. “Don’t see a lot of you here.”
“Not a lot of us made it out.”
“True that.”
Jake lowered his voice. The two of them engaged in what to Nadine seemed like a quick, tense negotiation of some sort, just below the level she could hear. When the conversation ended, Jake gestured for Nadine to follow him.
The cashier, or owner, or possibly both, turned a key in a door in the back where a plastic sign read “No Admittance - Employees Only.” Another sign below it read “Violators will be shot, survivors will be shot again” over a stylized crosshair.
The door opened with a solid, heavy clunk. Flat white LED panels in the ceiling flicked on. As the door swung open on enormous hinges, Nadine got the sense of massive weight. Beyond, steel walls gleamed. Racks bolted solidly to the walls held rows and rows of guns, both rifles and pistols, each held in place by a metal bar with a round, complicated-looking keyhole. The door swung shut behind them.
Jake walked down the rack of rifles. “So what was it like, man?” the steel-haired man said.
“What was what like?”
“Belarus. When the shit went down.”
Jake shook his head, so slightly Nadine barely caught it. He scratched at the place where his prosthetic met his shoulder. “You don’t want to know.”
“But—”
Jake whirled toward him with an expression Nadine couldn’t read, some feral mix of anger and pain. “Believe me when I say you don’t want to know,” he said, voice tight.
The man spread his hands. “No offense. Just making conversation.”
Jake returned his attention to the rack with a grunt. “This one,” he said. “You got a conversion kit for left-handed shooting?”
“Nope. Gotta be a bullpup?”
“Preferably.”
“Got a Kel-Tec that’ll do ya. Short, great balance, good in closed spaces. Costs, though.”
“Show me.”
Nadine tuned them out. They went on for a while before they reached some sort of conclusion. In the end, Jake exchanged the last of her cash for an odd-looking, strangely squat rifle and several boxes of ammunition. The man, who Nadine figured was more likely the owner than hired help, tried to offer Jake all sorts of freebies on top: a weird knife with three blades twisted in a sort of spiral, that made Jake snort and roll his eyes; a complicated-looking shoulder holster with a black plastic latch on top, that Jake said wouldn’t fit his handgun; and finally, a case of military rations with coffee substitute, self-heating, which Jake gratefully accepted. Nadine carried the case of rations. “Thank you for your service!” the man called as they left. Jake raised his hand as the bell jangled behind them.
As they climbed into the RV, a quick flicker of gold from the cacophony of holographic ads in the window next door caught Nadine’s eye. A golden-skinned woman in white bent forward alluringly and blew her a kiss. Pixelated hearts danced around her. A number flashed beneath her. She disappeared. Nadine blinked and shook her head.
“What?” Jake said.
“Just…I saw an ad that reminded me of Liz.”
“She really left a mark on you, huh?” Jake said. “I must admit, she had a nice avatar. Very comely.”
“That’s what it was designed for. Engineered desire. The semiotics of lust.”
Jake gave her a skeptical side-eye. “If you say so.” He stowed the case of rations and the strange-looking gun in the back of the RV. “Struck out there,” he said out loud. “Not giving up yet. I still have one more contact I can try. Gonna need some lunch first. I have a taste for greasy burgers. Sports bar sound good to you?”
“Um, sure,” Nadine said.
Half an hour later, Jake pulled into a tall parking garage wedged between a warehouse and a shopping mall. The arm rose when he stuck his new Booker card in the slot. They found their way to a sports bar decorated with road signs and posters of bygone sports heroes, all just a little too polished to be real. They found seats at a small table with a wobbly leg, its top covered in scratched-up red plastic. Other than a man with a scruffy, unkempt beard sitting in a booth muttering to himself over a grilled cheese and bacon sandwich, they had the place to themselves. A large-screen TV occupied most of the far wall, showing a hockey game in English with Spanish subtitles. “May be about time to ditch the RV,” Jake said.
“How? Sell it?”
“I was thinking more like leave the fob on the dash in a particularly unsavory neighborhood and walk away. I was hoping sending the Mini to Canada would throw them off the trail. Should’ve known coming through customs would set them back on the scent again. Figure someone might do us a favor by stealing the RV, maybe give us some freedom of motion. If—”
A beer commercial interrupted the game. Midway through, the screen flickered, then changed to a tastefully-appointed bedroom. A beautiful, gold-skinned woman sat elegantly on the enormous four-poster bed. She blew a kiss toward the camera. A number appeared beneath her.
“Jake!” Nadine hissed, pointing frantically at the screen. He turned. The beer ad appeared again.
“What?”
“It was her. On the screen. Liz.”
“You sure?”
“Yes! There was a number. Gone now.”
He frowned. “Should I be worried?”
“I’m not going crazy, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Good. Finish your food.”
On the walk back to the parking garage, they passed a jewelry store aimed at a solidly middle-class market. Restrained holographic ads scrolled along the top of large windows, behind which diamond necklaces and sleek watches nestled in white satin. Nadine paused for a moment to stare at a pair of earrings, overwhelmed with sudden homesickness.
The scrolling ads flickered and changed. “Jake. Call me. 7742:4458:3323.”
“Huh.” Jake shot an inscrutable look at Nadine. “Will you look at that.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Find a place to call, of course.”
The place he found turned out to be a dingy, poorly-lit coffee shop with a row of shabby terminals on a long wooden table with little privacy dividers made of particleboard between each station. It belonged to a chain Nadine had never heard of called Keep Your Data Ltd. “Texas thing,” Jake explained. “All their connections go through a no-log offshore proxy in a country not exactly friendly to American data extradition requests.” He gestured to Nadine to put on the headset attached to the table with a thin steel cord. “Port in. We’re paying by the minute.”
Nadine fit the goggles over her eyes. The foam padding was worn and discolored from use. She tried not to think too hard about how many other people had used this same rig, and for what. The headset chimed. Static washed over her vision. She chose one of the avatars built into the headset’s firmware, a blocky, low-poly female character with spiky hair and improbable anatomy, modeled vaguely after a popular character from the dawn of video games. “Okay,” Jake said, “I’m dialing us in now.”
This time there was no loading screen, no Spartan antechamber before they connected. One second Nadine was looking at the headset manufacturer’s logo, a company out of India she’d never heard of, and the next they were in the lush, tasteful bedroom with its roll-top desk and enormous bed. The candle still burned atop the desk, shorter now than she remembered.
“Welcome,” Liz, or Liz’s avatar, purred. “I wondered what it would take to get your attention.”
“How’d you find us?” Jake said, speaking from a blandly handsome low-resolution avatar in a boxy three-piece suit.
“Goodness, you two look a frightful mess,” Liz said.
“We’re using headsets from a chain that does proxy connections. Wouldn’t make sense to load my avatar from cloud storage if I’m trying not to be traced.”
“Keep Your Data?”
“You know it?”
“I was an early investor.”
“Who are you?” Nadine said.
“I am who I am. I called you here because our mutual friend wants to meet. He has the information you asked about.”
“That was fast,” Jake said.
“He’s efficient.” The avatar turned to him with a small smile on its face. Nadine watched, hypnotized. Even its animated breathing was flawless. “Surely that’s why you insisted on his help so crassly?”
“I said I’d call.”
The smile grew a fraction. “He didn’t want to wait.”
“That was a nice trick, hacking the video feed and the ads. You still haven’t told me how you found us.”
The avatar shook its head. “Embarrassingly easily, I’m afraid. Our mutual friend scanned your implant when you visited, got your UUID. Your companion’s appears to be offline, but no matter. From there it was simply a question of triangulating your location from pings on mesh receivers. Low resolution, but it got me to within a couple of blocks. Then I tapped into video surveillance in the area. Did you know Houston has surveillance almost as pervasive as London? It helps you’re driving such a distinctive vehicle.”
“If it was that easy for you to find us…” Nadine said.
“Why haven’t the police done the same? They can’t get access to mesh network relay receivers without a warrant, and they need a separate warrant for every camera owner. Plus they don’t appear to be looking for Jake, and your implant isn’t broadcasting.”
“I was more thinking about Ter—”
“No names, please, even over a proxy connection. The company you speak of is dealing with internal problems. That media packet you uploaded kicked over a hornet’s nest.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jake said.
The avatar sighed. “Don’t play coy. It didn’t take long to put the pieces together. But your friend raises an interesting point, and that’s why our mutual friend would like to see you soonest. In person. Tomorrow. I’ll send you the address. It’s a little ways out of town.”
“Well, you know, I’d love to, but I’m scheduled to get a haircut,” Jake said.
The avatar’s face hardened. Nadine wondered if Liz, or whoever was operating it, had full facial capture, and at what resolution. “Don’t be a bigger asshole than you already are. You paid to be on this ride. I think you’re going to want to hear what we have to say.”
“We?” Nadine said, then immediately kicked herself.
The avatar looked at her. “Tomorrow. Date and time in the side channel. Don’t be late, and please take a different vehicle.” The room dissolved, leaving Nadine sitting on an uncomfortable chair with a shabby headset strapped to her face.