So this was the infamous Maddy, renegade computational linguist. I’d seen her pic on her abandoned LinkedIn profile, but I hadn’t recognized her wearing that flashy wig. I wanted to meet her. Not right now, of course, with Lonso Drake loitering in the vicinity, but over coffee or a drink, when we could talk serious shop about her research. Sadly, I could tell this was not going to be the night for such a chat.
I turned to track down the nearest members of the security detail. Fortunately, the security detail had also memorized the guest list, and the two of them in the lounge with us had already spotted Maddy and were moving to intercept her.
Unfortunately, when they got to her, the same thing happened as with Devin. After a brief exchange in which Maddy did most of the talking, the security personnel peeled out of her way and pointed my direction, then left the room. She must have been using power morphemes on everyone in her path, I realized, and she must be just as good at it as Violet Parker.
I quickly scanned for a way out of the lounge other than the double doors through which Maddy had just made her dramatic entrance. There was a service exit near the bar that I thought we could reach before Maddy got to us.
But then another figure emerged from that doorway and blocked it: an Asian kid, maybe twenty years old, probably identified as a dude if I had to guess, with a bright green Mohawk, wearing a slick black jumpsuit and combat boots, and also holding a giant bullhorn which looked impractical in his grip. So the doorways were effectively covered.
Maddy and I made eye contact and held it for a long moment. I realized belatedly that she wasn’t here for Violet, or for Lonso, or for any of the assorted bigwigs who were still enjoying cocktail hour.
She was here to talk to me.
Whatever she had to say, I didn’t want Lonso to hear it, so I left him at the bar and made my way slowly across the room toward her. Sure, this was probably a bad idea; sure, this was maybe turning into one of those bad days at work that really stained your long-term promotion options. I figured I might as well get some mileage out of it. As I approached her, I saw Mohawk tracking me visually, casually asserting his active participation in this event without doing much more than stand in a doorway.
When I’d gotten about ten feet away from her, I stopped and said, “I’m sorry, this is a private event.”
A tiny smile crossed her face, and she said, “Obscenely rich scumbags only, is that correct?”
“Exactly,” I said, “so what are you doing here, Maddy?”
She seemed momentarily surprised that I knew her name, but she adjusted quickly.
“I’m here to rescue you,” she said.
“That’s—not necessary.”
“Really? Because it looks to me like you’ve surrounded yourself with some very bad people, and they’re not going to let you just walk away once you realize what they’re trying to do.” We both saw Lonso approaching, and she suddenly held out an open hand to me and said, “Will you come with me?”
I heard the power morphemes in her voice, but that didn’t make me immune to them. Before I even remotely understood why I needed rescuing, I absolutely wanted her to be the one to do it.
But before I could reach out to her in response, Lonso Drake decisively inserted himself into the space between us.
“Maddy,” Lonso said in a syrupy voice, “so good to see you again.”
“No, it isn’t,” she said.
“Excuse me,” I said angrily to Lonso, “we were talking here.”
“She’s influencing your mind,” Lonso said calmly, “but don’t worry, I’ll keep you safe.”
“And who’s going to keep you safe?” Maddy asked him.
“I think you’ll find I’m full of surprises,” he said.
“Last chance, Isobel,” Maddy said, her eyes locked on me.
“This is my job,” I said, feeling the spell between us dissipating thanks to Lonso’s interruption.
“It’s your life,” she said urgently.
“Don’t be so dramatic,” Lonso told her.
She finally gave up on me and turned her entire focus to Lonso, who was still about five feet away from her. It seemed like she was pondering making some kind of wisecrack, but then instead she suddenly started to raise her bullhorn. He moved incredibly swiftly and smacked the bullhorn out of her hand, then shoved her with considerable force backward, all the way through the doorway behind her and out onto the balcony. She landed on her back, rolled, and wound up in a crouch facing us from six or seven feet away.
The next thing we heard was Mohawk from behind us, screaming power morphemes into his bullhorn. I’d been led to believe you couldn’t amplify power morphemes with electronics, but apparently no one told this guy, because he was absolutely doing it. My skin felt like it was suddenly blistering from a burn and I cried out in pain. Lonso looked as though someone had kidney punched him by surprise. Mohawk moved to close the distance between us. I tried shouting for help, but his volume drowned me out and I’m sure no one heard me. Maddy saw that we were distracted and slowly inched to reclaim her own bullhorn, and I knew we couldn’t survive both of them attacking us at once.
The power morphemes coming from Mohawk’s bullhorn were deeply unsettling, grotesque perversions of sound waves and tortured, malignant meaning, convincing my nervous system to turn against me and fire every pain receptor at once. I dropped to my hands and knees screaming. It occurred to me that maybe I was just collateral damage, too close to Lonso to avoid being hit by this attack, but I couldn’t find the means to crawl out of the way.
Lonso was still standing, though. And I realized how badly my senses were being disrupted because out of nowhere I saw a handgun appear in his right hand as he raised it toward Mohawk and fired it. I mean, he didn’t get it out of his jacket pocket or some spring-loaded holster in his sleeve—I just flat out watched it materialize in his hand moments before he fired it. I was surprised by how bright the flash was. A split second later, I heard the surreal roar from Lonso’s voice that accompanied this gesture, a hyper-dense burst of his own power morphemes that was almost as loud as the bullhorn, and then I finally heard the shot itself.
Somehow Mohawk spotted Lonso’s gesture and dived out of the way of the shot. Then I felt the entire world slowing down to a weird and horrified crawl, an ugly version of my gaming flow state, as one terrible implication after another unfolded all around me. The abrupt silence in the room felt like an explosive decompression, and I suddenly felt immensely dizzy.
Because Mohawk and his bullhorn were gone. Even Lonso seemed shocked to see that.
Meanwhile Maddy had scooped her bullhorn up off the floor, and now she brought it around in a mighty swing that connected with the back of Lonso’s head, dropping him to the floor instantly. The gun in his hand evaporated from view as he collapsed.
With Mohawk’s attack neutralized and Maddy’s attention diverted, I realized I could either stay on my hands and knees weeping, or fucking do something. And Sparkle King as my witness, I didn’t need a fucking bullhorn. I shrieked the most vicious sequence that I could string together, improvising madly because what the fuck else was I supposed to do.
A force effect smashed into her, practically picking her up off her feet and sending her sprawling sideways across the room, the bullhorn clattering across the floor behind her. In addition to my voice, it sounded like a sonic boom went off, except somehow the shock wave was anger instead of sound. I was improvising based on the caliber of the attack I’d just heard from Mohawk, and clearly I got something right. But the force effect that seemed to hit her was actually her own body recoiling at the density of malicious intent I’d fired off at her.
My throat burned from delivering that much of an attack in one blast, and I feared I would not be able to do that again. I scooped up the bullhorn from the floor nearby and clambered to my feet, figuring I could use it as a bludgeon if nothing else. Maddy struggled to her feet, and she spotted the bullhorn in my hand.
And then suddenly she hit the ground hard, screaming and convulsing, with two Taser probes sticking out of her thigh. Behind her, I saw two middle-aged white people standing in the doorway, armed with the finest in usually nonlethal threat suppression technology. Phyllis and Max, Lonso Drake’s Watchful Eyes, had arrived to save the day.
Then one of them Tasered me too, and I hit the ground, screaming and convulsing, and then I blacked out.