“Significant people are termed ‘elements’ and assigned numbers,” she said. “Just like there are significant events that people report seeing, there are significant people. Based on the events people see and their probabilities, we can get a sense of who will be significant …who will be directly involved in what’s to come.”
“I don’t get it,” I said.
She pulled up one of her sleeves and held out the arm so I could see. There were pocked scars all down it from her wrist to her elbow, following the veins there. They were needle tracks.
“Ai pulled me out of the gutter,” she said. “She saved my life. For me, though, when I got clean, I lost my pre- cog ability. I can still do everything else, better than most, but I stopped having the visions.”
“You don’t see them anymore?” To me, that sounded great.
“I get the odd sighting, but not like I used to. Not like Ai. Not like you. We’re not all the same. All of us can influence others, but not everyone can see. Even those that can, not everyone can see as well as Ai. It’s what makes her special. You see that out there?”
She pointed out a window across the room. Through it I could see the lights of the city as it sprawled off into the distance. From that height I could see the two other major, huge towers, lit up like colored spikes.
“Ai doesn’t run the show alone,” Penny said. “She’s got powerful friends. You’ll meet them someday, for now just know we run everything. We’ve got our own organization, but it all comes back to Ai. She’s the one with the vision. She’s the one that sees and knows everything. It’s all for nothing without her.”
She pointed to the big star shape again.
“She’s looking for someone, someone related to that event. Element zero begins it, but element one ends it. Ai’s been looking for this missing element. She was wrong about me, and she’s been wrong before, but she’s been looking. She’s been looking for you.”
I looked at the star on the screen.
“Is everything really going to be destroyed?” I asked.
“Not if we can help it.”
She put one hand on my shoulder and squeezed. Gently, not like she had before.
“Look, I’m sorry,” she said. “In some ways, I don’t envy you. I know it’s hard. I was in your shoes once, but it is what it is. You might need to step up, and soon.”
She stood up and walked to the doorway, turning back before she left.
“Enjoy your new digs,” she said. “You’re totally free to do whatever you want at any time, but don’t cross Ai. Understand?”
“Yes.” That part I got.
“Sorry about your friend,” she said, and left. I heard her walk back out to the front door and close it behind her. I barely heard her, though, because I was still looking at the screen and trying to figure out what was going on.
“Yeah, me too,” I said, but she was gone. I was alone.
It was too surreal. The night before, I was sitting at a table in a fancy restaurant with a bunch of people I didn’t know, practically dying of embarrassment. Someone shot at us and all hell broke loose, and then my best friend died right in front of me. I fell off the wagon, and Nico hit me in the face. Just when I thought I was at rock bottom, I end up in a palace. I’m told I’m important, and that my dreams and crazy visions are not only not insane, but also that they could help stop a disaster.
“How much of this is real?”
I got up and walked around the apartment, trying to shake the feeling that I was trespassing. It didn’t feel like home. It was too much. It was too nice. The bed in the bedroom looked really comfortable, though. The inside of the bathroom was all tiled, and along with the giant hot tub was a cascade shower the size of my old bathroom.
In the bedroom I opened a huge walk-in closet and saw what Penny meant when she said that Ai got me some stuff to wear; it was filled with expensive clothes for pretty much every occasion. There were more shoes in there than I had ever owned in my life. Hanging from the door on the inside was what at first looked like a bra, but turned out to be a shoulder holster, like the kind I’d seen Nico wear, but smaller. It had a gun in it too, a little silver one with a pearl handle. There was a note pinned to the holster: FOR EMERGENCIES ONLY. I closed the door.
Shrugging out of my wet coat, I let it fall on the carpet and walked back out to the living room with the big TV. There was a big wood cabinet there with a bunch of glasses arranged on top. I opened the doors and saw it was a liquor cabinet, stocked to the hilt. Right up front were four big bottles of ouzo. I grabbed one off the shelf and shut the door, walking with it across the room, toward the couch.
I was going to flop down on the couch and maybe try to figure out how to work the TV when I saw a set of doors on the far wall and I wondered what they went to. I walked past the couch and pulled them open. When I did, cold, damp air blew over me.
“Wow.”
It was a balcony. I was looking out over the city. Still holding the bottle, I walked outside and up to the rail.
“Wow.”
I’d never had a view like that from so high before. It was amazing. The city was all lit up like some giant machine with a billion flashing lights. Down below, traffic flowed like glowing veins. I was in one of the biggest towers in the city. To the left and right the city went off as far as I could see, and in front, a little ways in the distance, some even bigger buildings loomed. Way off in the distance, two of the largest towers in the world sat on the skyline. The wind blew through my hair and mist sprayed my face, but I didn’t care. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
Without even thinking, I cracked the bottle. When you do anything a lot, you get a comfortable sense of where you stand in that situation, and I’d been drinking my whole life. The year or so when I stopped was a footnote. It was an experiment, a mistake. I knew how drinking affected me at every stage, from the first shot to the inevitable blackout. The ouzo was warm going down, trickling down into my belly while I stood out there in the cold. It started to mellow me out, make me feel more comfortable. I knew it wouldn’t be long before I started feeling more at home in my new place. Once I’d had enough to drink, I would begin to accept that what Penny said might be true.
Before it was over, all of my nagging doubts would be erased. That included the offhand warning about not crossing Ai. It also included the fact that if these people were laying any kind of hope, any kind at all, on me, then we were all going to be in for a world of hurt.
Calliope Flax—Archstone Plaza, Room #103
I tromped down the hall and banged on Buckster’s door. No one answered, but I heard a guy’s voice.
The JZI picked him up. He was in there. I looked through the front door with the backscatter and saw a shape move past it. I banged on the door again.
“Open up, Chief. It’s me,” I called.
I heard the voice again. He was talking to someone. Either he wasn’t alone or he was on the phone. A fan or something started blowing inside, and I went to bang again when I heard him coming. He opened the door, but not much. He looked out at me, then back over his shoulder.
“What’s your fucking problem?” I asked him.
“Nothing,” he said. “What do you want?”
“Nice.”
“Sorry. It’s not a good time.”
“I came to give you a heads-up,” I said. “I heard through my Fed friend, they’re looking to pick you up.”
“They already did,” he said.
“You got their dicks in a twist, from the sound of it. What the hell did you do?”
He looked up and down the hall, then moved like he meant to grab my arm, but he stopped. He was freaked
